Bricked my Archer C7

Report problems and success stories with Gargoyle on various hardware platforms.

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KuroNess
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Mar 07, 2016 10:45 pm

Re: Bricked my Archer C7

Post by KuroNess »

tapper wrote:Hi mate you have to tap the button fast as the router is booting to get in to fail safe. Otherwise, it may get into an endless loop and you will get stuck. When you see the manual, you can sees some pics there. It is not an accident then it will say that it is the same thing, and some people will find that useful. Otherwise, you can look at other websites or perhaps trying to ask a technician about it.
Hi. Got into the same problem too. Went in the forum to look for a resolution and almost did not try the suggestions here but when I did the button tapping it did the trick for me. So lucky me i guess. Got my router last wed and thought I'd bricked it for sure. Anyway, hope you guys can have yours fixed too. I know how frustrating it is when things don't work so just posted to say thanks. :D
Last edited by KuroNess on Wed Oct 18, 2017 5:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

mrD123
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2016 1:27 am

Re: Bricked my Archer C7

Post by mrD123 »

Recovered. Followed the instructions from this helpful blog posting:
https://mikepalmer.net/tp-link-archer-c ... -recovery/

Used this firmware, downloaded from TP-Link's website:
http://www.tp-link.us/download/Archer-C ... l#Firmware

What a relief. Thank goodness my 17-year-old was on hand to patiently walk through the instructions and try this recovery process. Ironic, since his downloading/inappropriate-content-viewing habits are what motivated me to use Gargoyle as a parental monitoring tool in the first place.

Unfortunately, the factory firmware in the now-recovered C7 is pretty lame for parental monitoring and control, and I've not found anything else nearly as useful as Gargoyle (esp. for monitoring web searches via logging.) Given the input of others on this thread, I'm not confident that there is a safe path to get Gargoyle to work on whatever this "new" vintage of C7 hardware is. So I guess I'll have to keep this nifty high-performance router sitting in mothballs until a new C7-v2-"new"(?) hardware flavor of Gargoyle is available.

Mike_Krüger
Posts: 14
Joined: Sun Jun 02, 2013 6:51 am

Re: Bricked my Archer C7

Post by Mike_Krüger »

Ironically, I bought this router so I could run Gargoyle. Vanilla OpenWRT is nice, but Gargoyle is just more convenient in my scenario.

Currently, even the latest iSpy-version won't run on it. A spanking new OpenWRT image from Trunk will however. Apparently the latest batch of C7 are delivered with a new flash chip, as documented here: https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php ... 21#p316021

It's a pity as Dutch provider Ziggo has these routers on offer at a reduced price, their custom firmware is easily replaced by summat else.

Lantis
Moderator
Posts: 6786
Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2015 5:33 am
Location: Australia

Re: Bricked my Archer C7

Post by Lantis »

Gargoyle is never based on the trunk branch sorry.
http://lantisproject.com/downloads/gargoyle_ispyisail.php for the latest releases
Please be respectful when posting. I do this in my free time on a volunteer basis.

Lantis
Moderator
Posts: 6786
Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2015 5:33 am
Location: Australia

Re: Bricked my Archer C7

Post by Lantis »

If you can find the trunk commit that fixed this issue ill look but I don't have time to dig through it at the moment.
http://lantisproject.com/downloads/gargoyle_ispyisail.php for the latest releases
Please be respectful when posting. I do this in my free time on a volunteer basis.

Mike_Krüger
Posts: 14
Joined: Sun Jun 02, 2013 6:51 am

Re: Bricked my Archer C7

Post by Mike_Krüger »

Lantis wrote:Gargoyle is never based on the trunk branch sorry.
I understand that, no problem. If anything, it was a suggestion rather than a demand. And it offers an answer to other who may be looking for information. I know that I was stumped.
Lantis wrote:If you can find the trunk commit that fixed this issue ill look but I don't have time to dig through it at the moment.
It's this one I guess?

I found it through this comment.

Keep up the good work and thanks again! :)

Lantis
Moderator
Posts: 6786
Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2015 5:33 am
Location: Australia

Re: Bricked my Archer C7

Post by Lantis »

Hmmm. Driver patches. My favourite lol.
I'll give it a go.
If it successfully compiled I'd then need a Guinea pig who is comfortable recovering a router from a non working state.
http://lantisproject.com/downloads/gargoyle_ispyisail.php for the latest releases
Please be respectful when posting. I do this in my free time on a volunteer basis.

Mike_Krüger
Posts: 14
Joined: Sun Jun 02, 2013 6:51 am

Re: Bricked my Archer C7

Post by Mike_Krüger »

Lantis wrote:If it successfully compiled I'd then need a Guinea pig who is comfortable recovering a router from a non working state.
Thanks - and of course I'd give a whirl. I had to recover through TFTP twice last night, so I well know the drill now :)

Looking forward to trying it out.

Rickdawg337
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2016 3:01 pm

Re: Bricked my Archer C7

Post by Rickdawg337 »

Noob here how do I uninstall gargoyle from my archer C7 V2 because it wont allow me to get an open nat type

Lantis
Moderator
Posts: 6786
Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2015 5:33 am
Location: Australia

Re: Bricked my Archer C7

Post by Lantis »

Rickdawg337 wrote:Noob here how do I uninstall gargoyle from my archer C7 V2 because it wont allow me to get an open nat type
Have you enabled upnp? Or considered port forwarding/dmz?
http://lantisproject.com/downloads/gargoyle_ispyisail.php for the latest releases
Please be respectful when posting. I do this in my free time on a volunteer basis.

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