Apple's iOS 5 upgrade a headache for many

Many users Wednesday eagerly tried to download iOS 5, the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system, and found themselves unable to do so, getting annoying error messages, not being able to complete the upgrade for other reasons, or worse — being told during the upgrade process that their devices could not be restored.

"To anyone getting 'An internal error occurred.' (3200) while installing iOS 5.0, Apple's servers are swamped, and failing half the requests," tweeted Jay Freeman, an iOS developer.

Although Apple has yet to make any public statement about the problem, others are being quite vocal about it on Twitter, Facebook and in forums, including Apple's own. The long-anticipated upgrade, announced in June, has more than 200 improvements to the mobile operating system for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The free upgrade became available Wednesday.

"It appears Apple is under a denial of service condition from the number of people attempting to update all at (once)," said Sohos senior security advisor Chester Wisniewski, on Sophos' blog.

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"The main problem is due to Apple’s servers being overwhelmed by the number of requests being made at the same time," said Cult of Mac. "Apparently some users are reporting successful updates while others are not, but only after trying 10 or more times.

"If you are getting 'An internal error occurred' along with a code of (3200) while upgrading to iOS 5.0 it is because Apple’s servers are getting slammed and you’ll either have to wait until later or keep trying to update your iPhone."

Msnbc.com's Rosa Golijan, in writing about iOS 5, suggests after users download iTunes 10.5, needed for the iOS 5 upgrade, they should back up their device or devices first before going on to do the iOS 5 download.

"All you need to do in order to back up an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch is connect it to your computer, open up iTunes, right-click the gadget in the 'Devices' menu, and select the 'Backup' option. The software will take care of the rest. Once the backup process is complete, feel free to tap the 'Check for Updates' button to get the iOS 5 download started. iTunes will walk you through the rest of the upgrade process."

At Apple's support site many users are saying they have completed the upgrade process, but only after many tries:

"It's the only thing to do, retry, retry, retry," posted one user. "Worked ... after 30 times or more."

"Well, it finally worked for me after 18 tries," posted another. "Just keep trying it until it works."

"I've rebooted, updated my windows, restarted my phone, disabled the firewall on my system, and now, trying for the 10th time. :/ Guess I'm really unlucky," was yet another frustrated user's comments.

The update is an important one; Wisniewski of Sophos notes that iOS 5 also has "a slew of security fixes. My count includes 98 vulnerabilities fixed in this release," so if you're not able to get it Wednesday, do keep trying in the next day or so; it's an important release.