iPad disabled

[kinetic (Steve)]

First drama with my son's iPad already.....well at least it took until March!

Background: Ipad turned on in Jan, set up Itunes account on it using Wifi thru home PC.
He downloaded all the apps he needed for school directly on it thru wifi. (not via cable to PC)
Has gone 2 months at school fine.....
We have never done a sync to pc directly thru the USB cable....(that might be the problem)

So tonight when he gets home his Ipad is disabled and is suggesting to connect to Itunes
He said it worked fine all day at school and the last lesson was music when they all left their
bags outside the music room unattended.
He walked home from school.
When at home Ipad says : Ipad is disabled . connect to Itunes.

He thinks it bumped around in his school bag and the home key was bumped and maybe put in the
wrong password 6-10 times and locked him out.
We say...no way, it locks you out for a minute first time then 5 mins next time etc....sounds suss.
We say some b...tard kid did it and locked you out.

Now.......
all help forums I read say that because we haven't ever synced and done a backup thru a PC we
have only one option:
To reset to default....and lose all his work etc?

Is this correct.....we might wait until tomorrow and let the school IT guy possibly recover/ reset it...

Steve

[rat156]

Did you turn on the iTunes WiFi Sync? It must have been plugged into a computer running iTunes at some stage, they don't work unless they have this done, at that point you can select if you want to have the iPad synced over WiFi.

Hope you did...

Cheers
Stuart

[Screwdriverone (Chris)]

Hey Steve,

If the iPad has been on-boarded by the school to get on the wifi or managed by an MDM (mobile device manager), then they may have accidentally or on purpose turned on geo-fencing which could be disabling the device when it is not at school?

I would check with the IT department and if they are a Catholic School, see if they have recently implemented a new Wireless solution and possibly a management platform as this could be the problem.

I sell wireless and network solutions at work and this pinged my radar when I read your issue.

Well worth checking at school first thing rather than try to recover, if it is being MDM'd it should be an easy switch. You may even find it starts to work again when in range of the school wifi??

Food for thought

Chris

[tlgerdes (Trevor)]

I see this becoming a growing problem that schools aren't in a position deal with .......... Sir, Apple ate my homework.

[michaellxv (Michael)]

You don't have to connect an iPad to Itunes to get it to work. My daughter also got a new iPad this year for school and it's never been near a PC. The instructions from the school were to use iCloud to back it up.

If by chance you have done this you could reset it then restore from the cloud.

[brian nordstrom (As avatar)]

I feel your frustration and hope it gets sorted soon and well .

Sorry , I cant help myself here but I never had this type of problem with a pencil and pad when I went to school ... the worst was a broken tip ...... or torn page .
Brian.

[Barrykgerdes]

I have avoided the iPad syndrome so far
However sounds like buying shares in Apple could be quite profitable.

Barry

[Wavytone]

Originally Posted by kinetic

because we haven't ever synced and done a backup thru a PC we
have only one option:
To reset to default....and lose all his work etc?

Is this correct.....

This is correct. The school IT guy can do no more than you can. Basically your kid was played for the sucker he is, and is about to learn a tough lesson:

1. iPads get messed up by other kids, broken, lost or stolen. Watcha' gona do when your homework was in it ?

2. You do NOT lend your iPad to other kids. Ever, mkay ? Same applies to laptops (that day will come).

3. The iPad is NOT the place to store things that matter. Thats what the desktop computer at home is for.

4. You put copies of stuff you want the next day on the iPad to use at school, there are plenty of easy ways to do this.

5. Back up the iPad, by connecting it to iTunes, regularly.

6. This one's for dad: if your computer doesn't have a backup drive, its time it did. Hard drives and SSD's do fail. And when they do, you can assume you have lost all within.

What's more, Murphy's law being what it is, things tend to go pear shaped at the worst possible time, like the night before a major assignment/essay is due. You need to be prepared to save the day and be a hero, or there will be tears. BTW if you think you can turn your back on the electronic age, you can't - in higher years you're going to find the kids are all carrying laptops - homework is submitted via the internet and exams are done online.

[Sconesbie (Scott)]

This happened to me last year with my daughters Ipad. Bugger it. I tried for hours to get it back on board. Googled for ages, Connected to Itunes, different laptop's etc. I even asked my work IT people. They all said "restore I'm afraid".

Her teacher certainly was not impressed as her work had been deleted.

Good luck and hope you can get it sorted.

[Draco (Draco)]

It seems that someone had tried to get into the iPad and has entered the wrong pin one time too many and it has disabled itself. The only way in, as far as I know is to restore from backups

[kinetic (Steve)]

Thanks for the help all,

yep Chris , Michael and Wavy were spot on and it needed restore to default.
The IT guy at school said the same after he looked at it.

Wavy...I know the 1 to 5......but do you think you can tell that to
a kid!!

I know I have to stay up with it, and that's the hard part.
I hadn't done my own homework on what iCloud was all about so i had actually put him off for weeks about doing a backup.
It had sync'd itself to iTunes via its own Wifi to our home network on
the night of the very first switch on....but we had never backed up, only
sync'd.
It would not re-sync via that same Wifi..

Seems that the 1st night sync wasn't enough.

Anyway, restored to default now, downloading all of his school apps
(no charge) at the moment and the school IT guy will put as much of
his day to day school stuff back as he is able to.

Lesson learned by me, lesson learned by boy-child...I don't think so....
but at least next time I can be the hero, Wavy

thanks again all,

Steve

[Wavytone]

Steve, good luck...

BTW it gets worse as they get older esp with laptops, when they start swapping lord-knows-what crap, usually infected with malware.

You can let the inevitable happen once or twice, then maybe the lesson about backup will sink in especially if its the night before an exam or essay was due.

Then there's smartphones, selfies and (anti) social media...

[CJ (Chris)]

And there's the old fashioned physically breaking them too........

[Steffen]

Originally Posted by Draco

It seems that someone had tried to get into the iPad and has entered the wrong pin one time too many and it has disabled itself. The only way in, as far as I know is to restore from backups

That would be my guess as well. Kids tend to do this to each other as some kind of prank. The Apple ID originally used to set up the iPad can get it going again, just hook it up to the computer and start iTunes.

Cheers
Steffen.