Gargoyle Forum

Hello, brand new user to Gargoyle (I hope!).

I just bought a TP Link Archer C7 and am preparing to flash. It says it's V3 and I don't see chatter about that version in the forum. (but on search I'm told the 'v3' text is ignored, so maybe I just haven't found the right threads yet.)

Firmware Version:
3.14.3 Build 150508 Rel.42275n
Hardware Version:
Archer C7 v3 00000000

Is it safe to continue and flash with a Gargoyle v2 image?

(I understand there is no safety when flashing away from factory. What I mean is, is it significantly more risky than flashing v2 image to v2 hardware?)

It isn't supported by us yet.
I wouldn't recommend flashing the v2 firmware. Anything could happen.

Try looking for Openwrt/LEDE support first.

Lantis wrote:It isn't supported by us yet.
I wouldn't recommend flashing the v2 firmware. Anything could happen.

Oh man. I bought this router just so I could get quota management via Gargoyle. I checked the compatibility guide before purchase too. Oof.

(Not complaining at you! Just in the general direction of TP Link and the others who make it so hard to get what we need.)

Thank you for the super fast response Lantis.

Lantis wrote:Try looking for Openwrt/LEDE support first.

Ok, will do.

Found 2 related threads:

• Archer C7 v3 Works! - viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9836
• Need help to install Gargoyle on Archer c7 with 3.15.1 Bu - viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9140

So one "go for it" and one "help me de-brick".

For thread watchers, Openwrt/LEDE page for the Archer C7 AC1750 page does have:
Experimental Versions - v3
- This is a 15.05 for v3 by risk: Factory Sysupgrade
- Factory firmware is flashable over the webui, tested for this device
- !!! Warning !!! this is a clean 15.05 build, no special stuff, you'll have to opkg install kmod-ath10k by hand, like on c7 v2

-- https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/ar ... c7-wdr7500

I'm not sure I'm ready to go to that yet. We'll see.

All i can say is if you do decide to go for it, make sure you read up on how to failsafe reset and debrick a router first.


Good luck

Well, I took the plunge, and it works!

My initial experience is very similar to @butler360 in viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9836.

I did spend the night with my heart in the pit of my stomach though. The firmware upgrade was seamless, and everything worked swimmingly for about an hour. Then suddenly no one had internet access, while the local LAN worked fine.

The router reported it had a WAN IP address and no amount of DHCP Release & Renew would get things working again to the outside world.

I let things sit overnight and then this morning bounced power on the router. Since then everything has worked fine. There's been about 7GB of traffic over 12 hours from a variety of devices (windows laptops, ipods, android phone).

The thread "TP-Link WR1043nd v2.1 drops internet connection" (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5321) from 2014 resembles this part of my experience strongly, so I'll provisionally conclude the no-internet is from an issue other than using a v2 image on v3 hardware. Time may prove this a broken conclusion of course.

Now I'm off to learn how to apply quotas to single people with multiple devices.

That's a good success story so far

I created an account just to confirm that this does indeed work. I had the exact same model number and did all the research. I'm glad someone was able to take the plunge to give me some confidence to try this with (what is to me) an expensive router I can't afford to replace!

I used version 1.9.2 archer c7 v2 to install.

It was a seamless installation other than below..

One word of advice is that you will need to disable any pop up blockers or other extensions on your browser to upload the firmware effectively.

So far no hitches. I'll report if there are any.

silentjoshua wrote:I created an account just to confirm that this does indeed work. I had the exact same model number and did all the research. I'm glad someone was able to take the plunge to give me some confidence to try this with (what is to me) an expensive router I can't afford to replace!

I used version 1.9.2 archer c7 v2 to install.

It was a seamless installation other than below..

One word of advice is that you will need to disable any pop up blockers or other extensions on your browser to upload the firmware effectively.

So far no hitches. I'll report if there are any.

Thanks for the update! Glad it's working for you.

At 3 month mark ran into problem with router continuously rebooting every 1-2 minutes after tweaking Quotas and QoS rules. Got out of boot loop by removing contents of `/usr/data/bwmon' but don't know what caused it to begin with or how to prevent: Rebooting every 1-2 minutes