iPad cannot be restored. Unknown error 4010

Few days ago, my friend asked me to check iPad as it does not charge and does not work well. And today I got time to check.

Initially, I found that it does charge, it was discharged and displayed picture with battery. And as result it just take as lot of time to charge as it charges very slowly as there is pretty much no software control over charge current, duration etc. Honestly Apple can do better to put some text on that screen that explains what’s going on.

After it did charge it starts but showing famous Connect to iTunes picture. Ok, iTunes time. iTunes told me that I have to either Update it or Restore. Initially I did try to update, but it just didn’t work at all. iPad is restarting, iTunes waiting on something and telling me that update is failing.

Then I did try Restoring it. Well iTunes insisted on Restore and Update. Ok, I went ahead and got error message iPad “iPad” cannot be restored. Unknown error 4010. Clicking on Help button brought to me useless page. I did search and found few really obvious recommendations: Restart computer, reinstall iTunes, try different lightning cable and different USB port. I though they are too obvious and useless, but at the end I decided to try them.

I did reinstall iTunes – no luck. I did restart computer. No luck. Tried different cable. No luck. Tried different USB port. The same. I tied to put iPad in DFU mode and still does not work.

And I did try few times at least each option. But I decided to try one more USB port and it was super glitchy. I think that port is busted. And then I tried one more and finally it did work. I sat still and didn’t move until process is finished. And lucky there was iCloud backup, so I was able to restore everything.

As conclusion I recommend finding all recommendations and follow them unless you know there are dangerous. Some of them may work even they sound silly and super obvious.

Just in case there are log files about update process that are located here: C:\Users\<Your user name>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPad Updater Logs. In cases it could be useful to check what is there. In case I didn't find anything useful.