In trying to do the right thing and keep the iPhone up to date, I got the unfortunate “something went wrong” dialog. I’m sure all the fan boys will ask why I bother if I have a windows machine, but that’s not the point of this post.

In trying to fix this, I have now discovered the big difference between Apple’s “reset” (think reboot) and “restore” (reset to factory defaults or wipe and reboot) with “restore” only available through the iTunes interface. For some reason, when I used to own an iPod three years ago, I thought there was a hard reset that would effectively “restore”. Unfortunately no more.

A few searches revealed nothing that worked for. I made sure I had the latest drivers installed, uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes (restarting windows). When all other posts seemed to suggest I would find an Apple Mobile Device under Device Manager, all I could find under the USB devices was an Apple Recovery (iBoot) USB device. I followed the advice from a number of sources including Apple support, all suggesting I should unplug, restart iTunes, replug in the iPhone and it should all worked.

Eventually, a combination between restarting windows, starting iTunes, plugging in the iPhone, restarting iTunes (note that last step) seemed to finally pick up the fact that I had an iBrick. So I sit here now while I wait for it to sync to my last backup, fingers crossed for the next time I update. I’m hoping someone else benefits from this post in case they also have trouble upgrading to the 2.2 firmware update.