"White screen of death" from upgrade?

I need some serious help! I just attempted to download the latest upgrade to my 3G (with the SMS patch). When I returned to my computer, it said that there was an error and the upgrade could not be completed. I had to do a soft reset of my phone, but when it comes on, all I get is a white screen, and then it shuts down again.

iTunes says that the phone "must be restored before it can be used in iTunes." My concern is that iPhone only identifies my phone as "Phone" under the device and not my specific phone. Additionally, the only tab at the top is "Summary" (no Application, Music, Video, etc), and under "Capacity" and "Software" it says "n/a."

If I select the "Restore" option, how will iTunes know what to sync afterwards, if it cannot even identify my phone now?

Please help, I have never had any problems with my phone, so I am not familiar with things like restoring the phone and how to do so properly without losing everything!!!

do the restore, when it is done it will ask you if you want to restore from a backup and that is where you will be able to pick you phone's previous name. Then all you info will sync back to your phone.

Try the following:

1. Turn OFF your phone. Make sure it is totally off, not sleeping.
2. Open iTunes
3. Plug in the USB end of the iPod Sync Cable into your computer.
4. Push and Hold the Home button on your iPhone
5. While still holding the Home Button, Plug in the iPod 30-pin connector end into your iPhone
6. Continue to hold the Home Button until iTunes gives you the message "iTunes has detected an iPhone in Recovery mode. You must Restore this iPhone before it can be used with iTunes"
7. Restore the iPhone (you may need to redownload the iPhone OS)
8. Restore the data on your iPhone from one of your backups.

You should be good to go now. If not, see a Genius at the Apple Store.

Thanks guys. I tried those suggestions yesterday afternoon on the advice of some friends, and they were unsuccessful. I made a trip to the Apple store hoping to get worked in because they didn't have any appointments until Tuesday. They worked me in at 8:45 last night, and replaced the phone.

I really appreciate your responses, thanks for the help!