Gargoyle Forum

I flashed 2 of my routers, TP-Link TL-WR941ND and TL-RW741ND, and both got bricked.

I chose "Preserve settings" while upgrading and I believe that might have bricked them. I'm sure I've used the correct F/W version.

Both are useless now and only Power light comes on after turning them on. No Sys light at all and no way to access via SSH

Recovery mode is your friend. Your routers are not dead, they are just sleeping. Login and run "firstboot" and they should recover.

pbix wrote:Recovery mode is your friend. Your routers are not dead, they are just sleeping. Login and run "firstboot" and they should recover.

I can't ping them at all. I tried following recovery mode instructions but nothing worked. What I haven't tried is opening and using serial. I don't have the tools/skill to do that.

Do you mind telling me the exact steps? I'd appreciate it.

with my tp-link i had to plug the Ethernet cable in to the wan port to get a ping.

tapper wrote:with my tp-link i had to plug the Ethernet cable in to the wan port to get a ping.

No ping, nothing. I used static IP and everything. Failsafe doesn't work..

What button are you pressing to get into failsafe mode?

Instructions are in the Wiki,

http://www.gargoyle-router.com/wiki/dok ... e_recovery

If you be sure to document what step you had trouble at and what happened on all the previous steps.

shahanovski wrote:I flashed 2 of my routers, TP-Link TL-WR941ND and TL-RW741ND, and both got bricked.

I chose "Preserve settings" while upgrading and I believe that might have bricked them. I'm sure I've used the correct F/W version.

Both are useless now and only Power light comes on after turning them on. No Sys light at all and no way to access via SSH

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr941nd

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr741nd

You will probably have to do Serial recovery for both routers if
all you see is the power light

If you see a power light - the router is not bricked, you just
have a bad firmware flash

If failsafe doesn't work - serial recovery will almost always work

If you cannot serial recover your router - you should not be
flashing 3rd party firmware - you always take the responsibility
that you are flashing the firmware, and if anything goes wrong,
then you have to recover the router yourself.

Read up on those 2 wiki pages for OpenWRT and how to recover
your routers via serial recovery.

n0pin wrote:What button are you pressing to get into failsafe mode?

QSS button

DoesItMatter wrote:

shahanovski wrote:I flashed 2 of my routers, TP-Link TL-WR941ND and TL-RW741ND, and both got bricked.

I chose "Preserve settings" while upgrading and I believe that might have bricked them. I'm sure I've used the correct F/W version.

Both are useless now and only Power light comes on after turning them on. No Sys light at all and no way to access via SSH

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr941nd

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr741nd

You will probably have to do Serial recovery for both routers if
all you see is the power light

If you see a power light - the router is not bricked, you just
have a bad firmware flash

If failsafe doesn't work - serial recovery will almost always work

If you cannot serial recover your router - you should not be
flashing 3rd party firmware - you always take the responsibility
that you are flashing the firmware, and if anything goes wrong,
then you have to recover the router yourself.

Read up on those 2 wiki pages for OpenWRT and how to recover
your routers via serial recovery.

Thanks, looks like serial recovery is the only way. I know that I'm the one responsible when flashing 3rd party firmware.. but someone might have had the same experience and perhaps have found a way to recover, would be good to know. And in this case, I won't use "try to preserve settings" ever again..