How long does a restore take?

[DFW333]

I have a 4s and it iTunes no longer recognized it as of whatever the last iOS update was this past week. When I plugged it into the computer it showed up as a camera under explorer and I could navigate around through my pictures, but iTunes would not synch the phone because it said it wasn't connected. Finally reached the point where it said a restore was needed about 9 AM this morning. It's been restoring ever since.

iTunes shows "Preparing Phone For Restore" at the top center with the little horizontal barber shop pole thing. The phone shows the iTunes icon, an up arrow and a USB plug.

Neither the phone or the computer are frozen, I am able to navigate through iTunes to play my music and the iPhone can power off (I tried it after the first hour). So how long is this supposed to take? It's been "preparing the phone for restore" for 5 hours now.

 

[DFW333]

Found the problem!

It was a USB extension cord I was using to plug my phone into the computer so I could use the phone while it was charging rather than leaving it way down underneat the desk.

Apple needs to make longer cords for the phones. Not sure why it worked with the extension
up until now though. iTunes still won't sync the phone though. Stupid program.

 

[Napoleon PhoneApart]

Do you have the latest version of iTunes installed?

 

[DFW333]

Yeah, I installed that earlier...unless it gave me an old version by mistake, I'm to the point where I don't put anything past them LOL

 

[DFW333]

Well I got my phone to sync with iTunes and now iTunes doesn't recognize any of the songs or files from my phone. Instead of putting what was on iTunes (all the apps, books, pics, music) back into the phone, it apparently decided that the phone was the master storage device and can't find half the files anymore. It has some of my books in the mp3 library even though they are not audio books, and it picked two music files at random and put them in a video playlist?

WTF?

This must be how Apple had the most profitable year for any company in the history of the world, updating an OS on a phone and forcing everyone to rebuy everything they already have two or three times.