Iphone stuck in recovery mode, trying to update to ios 8?

I was attempting to update to the new ios 8. I did this all in the normal way as i usually do. When it got to the extracting software at the top of the itunes screen it took about 1 hour for this to nearly reach the end. Then just before it reached the end it stopped and said it could not be restored as the iphone could not be found. Now the iphone 5 is stuck in recovery mode and every time i connect it to itunes it says i need restore which i do and then the same thing keeps happening. It goes to extracting software bar for an hour and then stops just as it is about to finish.

i have a laptop with windows xp and have installed latest itunes, i have attempted rebooting everything with no joy.

How to get my album covers back?

I got iOS 8 on my iPhone 5c yesterday and everything was great but then I went in my iTunes and noticed over half of my albums don't have their covers anymore. It just says the band and then the album. How can I get the actual album cover back?

Why won't our iPhones FaceTime?

I just started working offshore two days ago, I have never really used FaceTime, but my girlfriend went and bought an iPhone so she can FaceTime me and when we try it just says "connecting" forever. I need help

Can't delete songs from iPhone 5s?

I can't swipe/delete a certain few songs from my iPhone 5s (iOS 7). The majority of the songs will allow me to swipe left and delete, but not a certain few. They are actually on the device (not on the cloud) and I have tried hooking up to iTunes and deleting that way, but NOTHING seems to get rid of these songs. Its quickly becoming one more reason I'm considering switching to Android…

How to recover deleted photo from iPhone?

I had a photo which was pretty valuable for me(on my iPhone), but I accidentally deleted it(haven't done any backup etc.) Only thing I have left from this, is a profile pic. In my contacts. Is there any way to recover this photo from there?
I know that I can access contact picture on iPhone and save it to camera roll, but it's in terrible quality if I do so. Any other ways to do this?