Yikes, my iPad locked up

After about two years of flawless performance (except for the occasional Safari crash, easily recovered) my iPad 2 running Mavericks locked up. I had launched Search, the virtual keyboard popped up, and I turned on my Zagg bluetooth keyboard to enter a search term. The iPad responded to nothing. Couldn't turn it off. I plugged it into iTunes on my iMac and started a sync, not knowing what else to do. In the middle of doing that the iPad reset itself and started working fine. Kinda worrisome.

Not at all something got amiss and a simple sync can cure things also holding down the power button along with the home button would have done it.

Yep a hard reset would've sorted it. Also, I'm guessing your meant iOS7 but kudos if you have Mavericks running on your iPad

In those two years, think about the number of times you might have power-cycled the iPad. I suspect that it's a pretty low number, so have it reset randomly once is hardly something to worry about. If the system was unable to return to normal operation after the reset/crash, then that's something worth looking into..

mrplow said:

Yep a hard reset would've sorted it. Also, I'm guessing your meant iOS7 but kudos if you have Mavericks running on your iPad

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Oops, too many new OS's in one week. Yup, iOS 7 of course. Didn't respond at all to the hard reset or any other combination of buttons. But worked good all day today, so hopefully it was a 1-off.

iOS, like any other piece of software, is not perfect and can still be brought to its knees. On the whole, it's pretty solid but it's still designed by humans and if we learn anything from history, it's that humans can't built anything that's perfect (and hence why it's a matter of time before viruses become a problem for OS X).

vansmith said:

iOS, like any other piece of software, is not perfect and can still be brought to its knees. On the whole, it's pretty solid but it's still designed by humans and if we learn anything from history, it's that humans can't built anything that's perfect....

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True. I got this iPad 2 right at launch in March 2011 and for the past 2 years I've I pushed it hard every day at home and on trips, so the other possibility is hardware aging. But it's been working fine since that event, so either that or I threw it a bunch of commands in exactly the wrong sequence too rapidly and the software got confused. In any case, I had been planning on getting an iPad Air today to hand this one on to one of our kids.

It's happening every 1-2 days, fixed with a reset (hold down home and power buttons until Apple logo appears). This time it worked fine last thing last night, then would not turn on in the morning. The shipping date for the new Air has slipped to late November.

Time to start troubleshooting. I habitually update apps and I routinely close apps, so I don't think an errant open app is likely to be the problem, though I often leave open key apps like Safari and Mail. Could a recently updated but unused app be the culprit? Fortunately the new App Storre tells me the date apps were updated, so I could start deleting recently updated apps I don't use.

Possibly use iTunes and restore to the last backup prior to this issue.

newscribe said:

Possibly use iTunes and restore to the last backup prior to this issue.

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Interesting thought. My new iPad Air arrives soon. Wiping this old iPad 2 and resetting it to factory might fix this iPad 2, then I will try a restore to the new iPad Air and see what happens. If it persists on the new Air then that would indicate a software problem being passed along. If it persists on the old one after my daughter sets it up for herself then that might suggest a hardware problem on the iPad 2.

The question now is whether to restore my iPad 2 backup to the new Air or start over with a fresh install of all my apps on the new Air, which is a more complicated and lengthy approach to ensure I recover all my data that is not in the cloud. I guess the easiest approach is simply to do the most recent iTunes restore from the final iPad 2 backup, then if the problem occurs on the Air reset it to factory and do a clean install.

Wiping this old iPad 2 and resetting it to factory might fix this iPad 2, then I will try a restore to the new iPad Air and see what happens.

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Personally that would be my choice.;D

newscribe said:

Personally that would be my choice.;D

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And it worked fine. She set up the iPad 2 from factory default and has had no problems. I restored my last backup from that 2 to my new Air and I've had no problems with it either.

Hi Demapples,

Good to hear all is ok now.

vansmith said:

(and hence why it's a matter of time before viruses become a problem for OS X).

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14 years and counting for OS X, six years and counting for iOS ... it's "just a matter of time" before the heat death of the sun as well, come to think of it ...

You make it sound like an impossibility which we both know isn't true.

I certainly didn't say any such thing. The heat death of the sun is an absolute certainty.

We agree that "viruses becoming a problem for OS X" is a possibility. We disagree on the likelihood of that possibility is all.

I'm just pointing out the historical track record. You're making it sound like such a thing will occur in the foreseeable future, for which you have no evidence. Implications cut both ways, I suppose ...

newscribe said:

Possibly use iTunes and restore to the last backup prior to this issue.

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Just to be really clear, I simply used the last backup from the iPad 2 after the problem began, not before. My thinking was that some kind of corruption crept into the iPad 2 during the many iOS updates since I bought it on the iPad 2 release date. Resetting the iPad 2 to factory and using the same third party apps setup on the new Air worked to stop the crashing, which suggest that something like that had occurred. Can't blame the iOS updates specifically though, since it could have been a problem in one of the apps that got fixed with an update during the switchover. Seems to rule out a hardware problem on the "old" iPad 2 though.

Hi,

Truthfully it could have been one of many things, but from what you have said I would go for a corrupted file rather than hardware.

Am pleased to hear that all seems fine now.