Fix iPhone Error 1013

Yesterday Tina decided it was time to update her iPhone firmware. It was probably the first software update she did since she got her iPhone 4, months ago. Because she doesn’t need or even care about a jailbreak, her iPhone is clean. No jailbreak.

I was watching South Park when I heard her voice from upstairs: “honey, I have a problem, it’s saying something about error 1013“. Damn you, iPhone, for disturbing me while watching disturbing TV shows!

I had had this error 1013 before so I was confident it would be a one-minute fix…

As expected, iTunes was throwing the following error message: The iPhone “Tina’s iPhone” could not be updated. An unknown error occurred (1013). Just to make sure, I go through the restore process one more time, which takes 5-10 minutes and end up with the same error message.

Next step was downloading iReb, which didn’t do anything. Next step was downloading TinyUmbrealla, which didn’t do anything either. Without anymore ideas, I decided to Google the error, which took me to this thread on Apple’s forums.

After following the simple instructions detailed below, I was able to finally restore Tina’s iPhone.

On Mac:

  1. Open Finder
  2. Hold down COMMAND + SHIFT keys and press ‘G’
  3. Enter “/private/etc/” in the field and press “Go”
  4. Find “hosts” file in the directory
  5. Drag the file to your desktop
  6. Open it in a text editor
  7. Remove the line that has gs.apple.com entirely or put a # at the beginning of it to comment it out
  8. Save the file
  9. Drag it back to the /private/etc/ folder.

On Windows:

Locate the hosts file in one of the following directories:

Windows 95/98/Me c:\windows\hosts
Windows NT/2000/XP Pro c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Windows XP, Vista, 7 c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

  1. Right click and click on “Open With…” and then click on “Notepad” on the list.
  2. Remove the line that has gs.apple.com completely and save the file.

This whole operation took me a good 30 minutes, but most importantly, I missed one of my favorite South Park episodes, the one with the Dog Whisperer.

But, the best part of it was that I became the “hero” who once again fixed the iPhone.