The most well-known iTunes error 3194 is the one I fear most, when I try to restore, sync or update the iPhone. It is one of the errors that pop up every time, and it doesn’t mean that this error 3194 has not got a fix yet. This error has a lot of fixes and that you will have to try each one in a range of blends to fix the cause.
You may know that Apple is not all that interested in downgrading their iOS firmware versions. Apple’s support page is also not so helpful for these kind of errors like error 3194 on iTunes. All the signing is already done with so you’re going to have a bad time, if you’re trying to downgrade to iOS 6.1.3 or lesser after an upgrade to iOS 7. And when you are working with a jailbroken iPhone, it’s going to be even more intense.
When you try to update or restore your iPhone and you don’t see any errors pop up, then you are very lucky. But most people, who do not usually mess with their iPhones are these fortunate ones. For those, here is how you can fix the iTunes error 3194.
How to Fix iTunes Error 3194 During iOS Update on Your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch:
The first solution, in most situations, it’s because of a simple issue with the hosts file, when you try to upgrade or update your iOS firmware but iTunes giving this error. Here’s how to fix it:
Step 1:- If you are a Windows user, go to C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc/ and there you can find the “Hosts” file.
Step 2:- Mac users can find “Hosts” file is in /etc/
Step 3:- After getting the file, open it in Notepad (for Windows users, open this with Administrator Privileges)
Step 4:- When you open the “Hosts” file, you’ll mostly have the following line at the bottom:
74.208.105.171 gs.apple.com
Step 5:- Remove the line entirely or comment this line out by typing a single ‘#’ (without the quotes) in front of the line (before 74)
Step 6:- Save the “Hosts” file and then try to upgrade / update or restore your iPhone through iTunes.
In many cases, this error shouldn’t pop up now.
We can say again this method should work, if you are lucky. But this method never worked for me and after that too many times, I had my iPhone jailbroken. So that’s when TinyUmbrella comes to the rescue.
How to Fix iTunes Error 3194 using TinyUmbrella for a Jailbroken iPhone:-
You possibly have heard of already of TinyUmbrella, it’s a pretty little tool.
This method and TinyUmbrella are the actually part of the 3194 error fix for “downgrading” your iOS firmware. But it also can work sometimes in update process too. It’s generally as we had a jailbroken iPhone that was not restored to factory settings. Here’s how it works:
You’ll need to save SHSH blobs either to Cydia or local drive, if you want to downgrade your iPhone. You’ll need to save the SHSH blobs of your device, this time Cydia has saved SHSH blobs up to iOS 5.1.1; (and you can use TinyUmbrella to do this).
Step No 1:- Download the iOS firmware for your iPhone, that you want to downgrade/upgrade (for iOS 6 from a jailbroken 5.1.1)
Step No 2:- Download TinyUmbrella from here or any other source.
Step No 3:- Now connect your iPhone and close iTunes if it pops open automatically.
Step No 4:- Now open TinyUmbrella and click on “Start TSS Server”
Step No 5:- Put your iPhone in DFU.
How To Put Your iPhone in DFU?
- Connect your iPhone with a PC
- Switch off iPhone by holding Power button and slide to power off button.
- Now hold the power button for 3 seconds
- Press and hold the Home and Power (sleep/wake) buttons for sometime (10 seconds)
- After this, release the Power button but keep the Home button pressed for 15 seconds
- This puts the iPhone in DFU mode. The screen remains black.
- When you connect your iPhone to iTunes, a popup tells you that iTunes has detected an iPhone in DFU mode.
Step No 6:- If you want to upde your iPhone’s firmware, then click on Shift+Restore (Win) / Option+Restore (Mac) and point it to the iOS ipsw file you downloaded in Step No 1.
I hope that iTunes will restore it to the correct iOS firmware you pointed to and update your iPhone to it. Lets tell us in the comments section below if you fixed the error.
