How Do I Recover My Iphone 3g?

when i try to turn my phone on the apple logo comes up then the screen flashes it shuts off and tries to start again. it would repeat this until the battery died. i put it in recovery mode and connected it to itunes to try to restore it but when it says "preparing to install" the phone shuts off and then shows me the apple logo again and goes back into the loop of trying to start up and shutting back off. the restore fails and says error 9. Is there any way to get it to restore?