We ran into this the other day and this is what worked for us…
A customer of ours was firing up their iPads for the first time as the school year was beginning. Once booted up, they were not able to access the Apple App Store, update their iOS, or use any web browser without error. Upon further inspection we found the date and time settings were showing the year 1970 due to the iPads not being charged for a length time in which the batteries were completely depleted. Even more strange was in attempting to allow iOS to set the time zone automatically, we would get a spinning wheel and the time zone would never set.
Our first attempt was to set the date manually, but we ran in to a couple issues using this method. First, there is no year field to select from when manually configuring the date. This means we had to scroll day-by-day to get to the current date. Second, once we got close to 2015 the date would skip to the year 2036. Attempting to scroll down to 2015 was unsuccessful as well.
By tethering the iPads to a cell phone and using the cell service as our internet connection we were able to successfully implement a work around. This is how we did it:
- Make note of the name of your iPhone
Select Settings –> General –> About – Make note of the name listed at the top of the screen
- Using your iPhone turn on the hotspot function
Select Settings –>Personal Hotspot
Use the slider button to the right of “Personal Hotspot” to enable the hotspot function on your phone. **Make note of the “Wi-Fi Password”**
- Attach the iPad to the network being created by your phone
Select Settings –>Wi-Fi
Under “CHOOSE A NETWORK” locate the name of your iPhone and select it. When prompted for the password, enter the password you made a note of previously
- Set the date and time to be automatic
Select Settings –> General –> Date & Time
Use the slider to the right of “Set Automatically” to enable the iPad to set the date and time automatically
- After a minute, or so, you will see the time indicated at the top of the iPad screen change automatically to the correct time
- Rejoin the iPad to your school/business network as it was previously
Select Settings –> Wi-Fi
Under “CHOOSE A NETWORK” locate the name of your network, select it, and enter the password if prompted