Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 19:45 Post subject: WNDR3800 v1 bricked
I kinda seem to have bricked my WNDR3800v1. It has a blinking green power LED. It's all the router's fault, honest!
It had DD-WRT on it while it was working fine, I returned home from work one day to find it's WiFi was no longer working i.e., the SSID wasn't showing up on my devices but when I tried to use the internet on the PC connected via LAN, it was working fine.
I did a 30-30-30 on in and it caused a brick and not the first time either; these things are very brick-prone on 30-30-30s.
Since it was late and I was kind of panicking, I tried to flash the stock image on it and in that process erased the DD-WRT partition with instructions I found online somewhere.
I've tried to TFTP flash quite a few DD-WRT images on it in addition to the stock one and also openwrt but nothing seems to bring it back to life. I've also tried to use Router Tools without success... The power light keeps on flashing green. It has been responding to pings all this time and still is...
Can somebody suggest something I can do to revive this thing without opening it up to do a serial port revival?
It's not 100, much more actually. 259 ms I think, I'll check again get back to you.
Like I wrote earlier, I've tried to flash many different kinds of firmware on it including stock via TFTP and while the transfer is always successful, the firmware doesn't stick. I am confused about how much time the router should be left alone after transferring the firmware via TFTP? I've left it alone for about 5 minutes minimum and nothing changed.
Also, I read somewhere the power light should be amber while or after flashing via TFTP but mine is never amber after the initial boot phase after it starts flashing green about once every second...
Flashed my WNDR3800CH yesterday. While data transfer the LED was off. It came back solid green i think after the tftp transfer finished. after a couple of minutes it started blinking amber-green an restarted.
This all happened after numerous fails.
What tftp prog are you using?
I used tftp2 what was mentioned in several posts i found in the internet. Never had success. Tried on the old xp machine and win10. PumpKIN on win10 worked great for me. Switched from openWRT to ddwrt absolutely flawless (heard this is not an easy switch).
I'm back. This router is still the same as it was before. I'm still looking for a solution if anyone can help. To reiterate, I deleted the Linux partition most foolishly (needless to say) and since then I've tried numerous numerous times to tftp stock, openwrt, dd-wrt et al. on this thing without any kind of success. If anyone can help please. TIA.
Edit :: Ping is still responding if I set a static IP on the PC and ping 192.168.1.1.
Joined: 08 May 2018 Posts: 14246 Location: Texas, USA
Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 18:53 Post subject:
Does this router have a tftp recovery mode triggered by the reset button? If not, ping, put, power/ ping, power, put.
Pumpkin may help. Not sure if nmrpflash would be valuable or not, but that is also an option.
Does this router have a tftp recovery mode triggered by the reset button? If not, ping, put, power/ ping, power, put.
Pumpkin may help. Not sure if nmrpflash would be valuable or not, but that is also an option.
Hi, thanks for the reply. I've tried pumpkin also without success. I don't follow what you mean by the first line of your reply. tftp recovery and those weird noises you made... ping put ping put etc. (hope you don't mind)
How do I trigger tftp recovery although I'd be pretty sure it went out the window when I did my flash magic...
Edit: Never heard of nmrpflash before, I'd be willing to try anything if you can guide me.
Edit: I've looked up nmrpflash and it looks very very interesting / promising. Going to try this soon.
I've tried telnetenable also in the past without success if that is what you meant by the tftp recovery...
Ping: via command prompt, ping -t router.ip.address.here
Power: Apply power to the router
Put: With your TFTP client, click put.
I use a.jounin 4.52 tftpd 32-bit with 1024 anticipation window size configured or the Linksys tftp client. Nmrpflash is a netgear-specific tftp client.
Thanks again. I've looked up nmrpflash and going to try that. I've tried the ping power put though, no luck sadly although I didn't use the anticipation setting you mentioned. Will try that also.
I'm going to try the software method first, failing which I'll have to look into finding someone that can lend me their unmanaged switch and even then I don't know how to use it to unbrick the router (sorry, never heard of this method either). Is it possible you could elaborate on this a bit please?
Also, the TFTPD version I tried was the latest one, I'll try the version you recommended as well.
I think there's a JTAG method to unbrick as well, right? Although I don't have the expertise to do this myself, I do have a friend that might be willing to help if all else fails.
(hope you don't mind)