Just checking, because all your problems do point to USB / connectivity issues, you are plugging directly into the main USB sockets on your PC, yes? You are not plugged into a hub or monitor or keyboard or anything else like that. You should always do this stuff connecting directly to the motherboard if you can...
You should keep in mind that I tried the same jailbreak on a few different computers and on one of them, a Lenovo netbook, I was connected directly to its motherboard ports, while on the other PC I was connected via front panel extension (not sure if this is what it's called but the idea is that you can have USB ports on the front panel of your tower case that's usually connected by the cords to a computer's motherboard).
With that said I want to say that I've jailbroken my iPad. It runs untethered, jailbroken iOS 4.3.5 but there are interesting details I want to share and which I'm sure you're going to love to hear about.
I'll start by telling what failed for me first. I was very much determined to jailbrake 4.2.1 because I wanted an untethered jailbreak so I tried greenpois0n but it just never went beyond that first output of text that I quote in earlier post. As you all know it should be followed by a larger output of onscreen text but that never happened. I left iPad in such state and eventually, after some 20 minutes perhaps it simply rebooted with stock iOS. No jailbreak happened. I tried this on tower PC and netbook, both running Windows XP Professional.
As I've successfully saved SHSH blobs for iOS 4.2.1 I decided to test custom signed IPSW firmware of this version but I saw no more success than with greenpois0n. The farthest I got with it was seeing a phone-bird logo instead of Apple's logo with a progress bar across the screen that never moved. The iPad would just sit at that stage and never progress forward. Eventually iTunes would bail out saying, in error code speak, that something might be wrong with USB or more general guess, like anitivirus or firewall software preventing iTunes from functioning properly.
So, I realized I was getting nowhere at all with all this and made a decision to upgrade to the latest iOS v4.3.5 and do a tethered jailbreak. It's not THAT bad, but annoying of course. Well, I followed this guide :
and ended up with tethered jailbroken iPad. I can't tell you how much I was surprised to learn that the iPad would actually DO boot without the assistance of redsn0w! It wasn't just a fluke, I've rebooted it some 5 times already perhaps and it works each time.
If booted without the redsn0w assistance Cydia doesn't start up as well as Safari but those two applications are the ONLY ONES THAT DON'T WORK! Everything else works just fine.
I went ahead and experimented a bit and added some software from my iTunes library that I use with iPhone (some of which turns out is classified as suitable for iPad too).
So, I added new apps to iPad booted without redsn0w assistance from iTunes library and some from App Store iPad native app and rebooted the iPad without redsn0w assistance too. All the new apps would work as I hoped they would, again only Cydia and Safari wouldn't work.
I then tethered booted iPad with the help of redsn0w and checked the apps, they all worked just as before without any problems, only this time Cydia WOULD start as well as Safari. I added new soft again, rebooted without the redsn0w assistance and the apps would work, but Cydia and Safari.
I also tried to add apps from a different computer (I've iTunes library setup as a shared DB by two of my personal computers for convenience and failover concerns) and that worked too in the same fashion as described above.
Which compels me very to conclude that my tethered jailbreak turned out to be, in fact, ALMOST an untethered one. It's a very pleasant surprise that I didn't even hope to see. I was expecting a sturdy, tethered jailbreak that wouldn't let me boot and use 99.9% of apps on iPad if it's attempted to boot without redsn0w assistance.
I don't complain at all lol I guess I deserve it after all the trouble I went through only to see 4.2.1 jaibreak that works so easily for a lot of people fail consistently for me
Seriously, though, why does it boot and 99.99% of apps work? Is this how tethered jailbreak is supposed to work with iOS 4.3.5? I saw videos on YouTube for 4.2.1 and those tethered jailbroken iDevices wouldn't boot ever. Really, this can't be a fluke or magic there has to be some logical explanation to this. Any ideas?
I'm pretty stumped. Everything points to the PC being the problem, but it's so long since I did a 4.2.1 JB, and I don't have a device suitable to test it at the moment... Sorry.
Well, three computers, 2 notebooks and one desktop, and very inconsistent behavior... I don't know what to think! Could it be the iPad itself? It seems to work pretty stable, though.