I bought a 6th generation iPad for my kid for Christmas. It was used, obtained from a seller on swappa.com, and it worked perfectly when it first came in. I went through the initial setup, which I am going to swear included setting up the passcode.

When I was finally able to get my kid's appleID (didn't have it written down anywhere, so had to get her to divulge without raising any suspicions), I went back to the iPad to finish setting it up so that it will be fully ready to go on Christmas morning. It asked for the passcode, which I stupidly entered multiple times, resulting in the lock condition. Says it is locked for the next 15 minutes (like I said, I stupidly entered the wrong passcode a bunch of times).

I've found steps from apple sites to go through to get this thing into recovery mode. None of that seems to be working. The steps that I've followed are to turn the device off via the Top button. Then while holding the Top and Home buttons, connect to PC to get it into recovery mode. All it does is flash the Apple logo a few times, or as it is doing right now, it is back to the enter passcode screen (which I'm not going to do).

Any suggestions? I may just take it to an apple store or simply mac which is closer to see what can be done.

I'm reading different steps. It's confusing because recovery mode has changed several times over the years.

Turn off device.

Make sure it's not connected to a computer or charger.

Press Volume up

Then Immediately press and hold sleep and home button. The logo will come on, but keep holding till you see an iTunes logo and usb cable picture.

Connect ipad to computer and open iTunes.

Click on restore as new iPad.

I finally did get the thing to connect to iTunes on my laptop by changing out the cable. Got it working just fine.