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WR941ND v5 - Bricked downgrading 1.10 to 1.6.2

Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 10:31 pm
by top_s
Hello everyone!

Longstory short, I bricked my TP-Link WR941ND V5, witch is running as a WR841ND V8.
It was running Gargoyle 1.10.0 with minor stability issues, so I decided to "improve" it by downgrading to 1.6.2 WR841ND V8 sysupgrade image, and got a brick.

Normal bricked status is only PWR led on.

I can enter recovery mode with WPS/reset + Power On. In this cenario, PWR + WPS leds are on, but TFTP won't work.

When in recovery mode, Wireshark (network sniffer) tells me the router asks for something:

Code: Select all

No.     Time           Source                Destination           Protocol Length Info
      3 0.101446       ba:be:fa:ce:08:41     Broadcast             ARP      60     Who has 192.168.0.66? Tell 192.168.0.86
But there are no TFTP requests for a recovery file.

I could try and WinSCP it, but I have no idea if it would help or make it worst. I'd also need some instructions, as I have limited networking skills.

Any help will be very much appreciated!

Re: WR941ND v5 - Bricked downgrading 1.10 to 1.6.2

Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2018 5:38 am
by ispyisail
OpenWRT wiki is the best place to look for a solution

Re: WR941ND v5 - Bricked downgrading 1.10 to 1.6.2

Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2018 12:13 pm
by top_s
Thank you, will take a deeper look into it.

Also, thanks a lot ispyisail for the great job at keeping Gargoyle!

Re: WR941ND v5 - Bricked downgrading 1.10 to 1.6.2

Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2018 11:17 am
by top_s
So, after a lot of pain, found the answer:

1- Openning way for wireshark/TFTP in Windows firewall wasn't enough. Shutting windows firewall off entirely did the trick;

2- Brick reason is: WR941ND v5 is not supported by WR841ND v8 1.6.2 firmware. Used WR841ND v8 1.9.2 firmware instead. Working like a charm.