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I get this error message in iTunes when trying to update my iPhone 3GS (non jailbroken) from 4.3.3 to 4.3.4:

Why is this? The iPhone 3GS is listed under “products affected” on the iOS 4.3.4 release notes.

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Do you have TinyUmbrella installed? – user6124 Jul 26 '11 at 10:39
nopeeeeeeeeeeeee – XAleXOwnZX Jul 29 '11 at 22:18
Try doing a backup in iTunes and then restore, and try to update again. – Tyilo Aug 5 '11 at 11:17
1  
@XAleXOwnZX: Welcome to the community. Please start accepting answers to your questions, including for the questions you have already asked, especially if you are going float bounty out there. You are going to lose those 50 points one way or another, so you might as well put them to good use. – Philip Regan Aug 5 '11 at 17:02
I guess but none of them help.. i don't want people coming to my questions for bounty, i want them to answer usefully and get rewarded as such – XAleXOwnZX Aug 6 '11 at 18:19

3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

Apple have now released iOS 4.3.5, so they may have disabled the authentication for 4.3.4, as they do with all legacy versions of iOS.. Try downloading and installing iOS 4.3.5.

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This was before 4.3.5 and i've had the same problem on iOs 4.3.2 and getting it to 4.3.3. I ended up doing it on a friends computer – XAleXOwnZX Jul 26 '11 at 15:25
In that case, you might have edited your hosts file at some time in the past. Look in /private/etc/hosts for a line containing the text "gs.apple.com", and delete it if it exists (you'll probably need to do that from the command line, and /private is not visible in Finder). – Mike Scott Jul 26 '11 at 16:30
See here for full instructions on editing your hosts file: tipb.com/2011/07/26/… – Mike Scott Jul 27 '11 at 7:11
The problem persists even after following those instructions and trying out 4.3.5 – XAleXOwnZX Jul 28 '11 at 2:08
up vote 0 down vote

Did you try to install the new firmware by clicking on "Check for Update" in iTunes? If so, you might want to try installing it manually. Download the correct firmware from http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=750 and option-click on "Check for Update" and select the file you previously downloaded.

As noted above, Apple tends to stop signing older versions when updating, so I'd directly try 4.3.5.

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Like i said in a comment above, i'm having and have had the same problem for 4.3.2, 4.3.3, and 4.2.3 upgrading to 4.3.5 – XAleXOwnZX Aug 3 '11 at 23:53
up vote 0 down vote accepted

After a crazy amount of googling… I FOUND THE ANSWER! It all lies in which authentication server your iTunes connects to when restoring or updating your iOS device. If your having the same problem as me, all you have to do is edit the HOSTS file under 

/private/etc

(you can access this by rightcliking on finder in the dock and clicking "go to folder…" and entering in that folder location)

From there, copy the HOSTS file to a place where you have access, and open it with text edit. Append this:

#74.208.10.249 gs.apple.com
#127.0.0.1 gs.apple.com

and delete all other mentions of "gs.apple.com" and save the file. Copy this file back into the /private/etc folder, and replace the older one. Authenticate as needed. Now if you run the following terminal command:

ping gs.apple.com

The resulting IP address should be 17.112.176.11. IF something went wrong, it would be 74.208.10.249 or 127.0.0.1. If the ping is going to the right address, restart iTunes and try restoring or updating your iOS device, to discover that the problem is solved!

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