In case you need help removing iOS4 from your iPhone 3G, here are the steps that I followed to downgrade my iPhone 3G to OS 3.1.3.  Before we get going, I’m not taking credit for these instructions since this is a cleaned up version of this MacRumors forum post.  Shout out to my buddy Tony Rodgers for sending me the original link.

Required Downloads

Before you get to the steps, be sure to download these two files first.

• iPhone1,2_3.1.3_7E18_Restore.ipsw ( this is the OS 3.1.3 restore file )
• blackra1n ( pick the installer that matches your OS )

Restore iPhone 3G to OS 3.1.3

1. Connect your iPhone, open iTunes, then click your iPhone to go to the Summary screen.
2. While holding down Alt ( OSX ) or Shift ( windows ), click the Restore button.  If you held the correct key when clicking restore, you should get a File Open prompt.
3. Select iPhone1,2_3.1.3_7E18_Restore.ipsw that you downloaded earlier and let iTunes do it’s work.
4. After iTunes tries to verify the update, it should throw an error.  This error is normal, so disregard even though iTunes has left your iPhone 3G in restore mode.  Close iTunes.
5. With your iPhone still connected, open blackra1n and click “Make it rain”.
6. Manually power cycle your iPhone 3G if it doesn’t restart automatically for you.

That’s all there is to it.  I know these steps work because it’s exactly what I did on my iPhone.  The last part of the uninstall is pretty hairy since I wasn’t able to close iTunes without unplugging my phone.  Also, when I ran blackra1n, my phone never rebooted on it’s own.  The screen went black and I just unplugged the iPhone and forced a restart.  When my iPhone booted up, I was back on 3.1.3.

I hope this helps somebody out because iOS4 on an iPhone 3G is horrible.

After finishing this post I ran into all sorts of other strange issues and restarted using a Web Appliction instead of a plain old Website.  Between IntelliSense not showing any classes, to project reference issues, I couldn’t figured it out in time.  I’m sure there’s a way, I just had to move on.  So maybe this ramble below will be helpful for someone.

Just ran into something quirky with Visual Studio 2008′s new ADO.NET Entity Data Model wizard.  While working on an ASP.NET 3.5 website ( not a codebehind web application ) I was trying to get the ADO.NET Entity Data model wizard to work with MySQL and ran into a probable Visual Studio bug.  To sum up the issue, if you are going to add a new edmx to your project, do NOT save it to the App_Code folder initially.  Put it in your root folder, compile your project, then move the edmx where you’d like.

Assuming you’ve already created your ASP.NET Website project, here’s how you reproduce this issue.

Right click your project and left click ‘Add New Item’

Add New Item

Select ADO.NET Entity Data Model, name it, select your language of preference

ADO.NET Entity Data Model

Click Yes to the ‘Store in App_Code’ prompt

Place file in 'App_Code' folder

Complete the new Entity Data Model wizard

See this tutorial if you have not done this before

Compile project after completing wizard

Invalid token 'void' in class, struct, or interface member declaration

At this point your project should have a new.edmx file located inside of the App_Code folder, but the project won’t build without failing.  If you are stuck in this predicament, follow this workaround.

Move .edmx to root folder and rebuild

WORKAROUND : move edmx to root folder, then recompile

After moving your edmx file to the root folder you should be able to compile without problem.  Assuming this solves your problem, you should be able to move your edmx file to the App_Code folder without problem.  Seems like an initial compile problem.

The website behind the presentation

Get the Visual Studio 6 scroll wheel addin here.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\VC#\VC#Wizards\CSharpAddWebFormWiz\Templates\1033\WebForm1.aspx

Now I don’t have to keep removing all those extra tags that Visual Studio likes to add. MS_POSITIONING?!?! Am I the only programmer who knows HTML and CSS?

Of course, you could just read this article and build your own custom form wizard.