iPhone 3.0 beta restore error 1602 or 1604 solution

After downloading and trying to update 3.0 beta 4 and iTunes pre-release 8.2 to go with it, I was prompted with a nice error 1602 from iTunes and a pink screen on my iPhone. Trying again got me a lovely 1604 error instead.

You’ve never seen a man panic…

So, to get it working again here are the steps I took:

1. Uninstall iTunes & QuickTime
2. Backed up the iTunes folder in C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Apple Computer\, then deleted the original
3. Rebooted the PC
4. Re-install iTunes 8.2 pre-release
5. Run the restore again from iTunes

Not sure how mandatory step 2 above is but I did it and it worked for me, plus I didn’t have anything in the iTunes folder that I needed to keep.