I had been scratching my brains out when I got this iTunes restore error for a day because of my itchy finger that “tried” to jailbreak my iPhone 4 (5.0.1 firmware) with the beta redsnow 9.0.10b1.

When I tried restoring I get error 1600 or 21 and later I found out a solution online

1) Open Finder
2) Press Shift+Command+G
3) Enter in /private/etc/ in the box that apears (For windows or other o/s go here to find)
4) Find the Hosts file and move to the desktop
5) Open Hosts file and scroll down to the very last line
6) Put a # in front of that line (in front of 74.208.10.249 gs.apple.com)
7) Save & Put back into /private/etc/
8) Go to iTunes and find your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.
9) Press the option key and press the restore button at the same time
10) Find the software version you want to restore to
11) Restore

This basically means you # (comment) away the host linking to Apple so iTunes cannot verify your iPhone if it’s “eligible” or not to restore.

This probably means Apple have communication with iTunes to prevent jailbreaker from restoring to factory settings hence scaring potential jailbreakers from jailbreaking in the future.

This is pretty scary considering my iPhone is my extension of my body that I can’t do without.

Bricking the phone is terrible, now with this solution I can restore it back to normal!! YAY