So after multiple attempts over the course of a couple days. I was able to restore my girl friends iPhone. Like others the iPhone was stuck in a boot loop due to not having enough storage on the phone, which was false but anyway, Some tips I gathered after failed attempts is to make sure your laptop is updated to the most recent OS and has available storage of atleast 8.11 gb to use. next step once you get to finder only click restore. do not click update or it will not work. Once you click restore, it will prompt for the update and restore process to occur. After that you wait for everything to process and the phone should be restored/updated and you will be able to do an iCloud back up.