May 16, 2013

Restore Linksys Firmware without web interface

 What

Restore corrupted Linksys firmware without web interface (broken)

 Problem

I had a client who has a failed linksys device EA6500, restoring the firmware wasn't possible with the web interface.. so I did a quick google search and came up with a rescue tftp technique.

 Solution
On this page I'm going to detail how I restored the firmware in my Linksys EA6500 to the original Linksys firmware. It may also work for other models in the Linksys range, you just need to have the right firmware.
 
What you will need:
  • The correct firmware image for your router model which you can download from Linksys support. This will be a .bin file.
  • The official Linksys TFTP recovery utility which I downloaded from Linksys. This application was so hard to find that I've put a mirror of it here: linksys-tftp.exe
  • A Windows PC connected by wired Ethernet to one of the four LAN ports on your router. (I actually used Virtual PC on Mac OSX)
  • The IP address of your router. The default IP is 192.168.1.1 but you may well have changed this.
Before starting, I made sure that I could see the router on the network, in my case, I couldn't access the web interface because it was bricked, you may have to ping it to makes sure it's there. If yours is not bricked and there is anywhere in the web interface to turn on boot_wait, it is important to do this before you start.
If you also have a setting to adjust the length of boot_wait, turn it up to something useful like 20 seconds as the default would appear to be one second.

Launch the Linksys TFTP application and you should get a window like this:

Linksys recovery program 
 Enter the IP address of your router in the first box.
Enter the router password in the second box. For me, this was "admin".

Click the button to the right of the third box and navigate your way to the firmware image .bin file that you downloaded from Linksys and click 'Open'.

Click the 'Upgrade' button.The upgrade should begin, you should recieve a information box that says successfully firmware restored. If it doesn't work, the application will tell you straight away that it's failed.
Once it's finished, the router will reboot into the Linksys firmware and set username and password to the default. It may also reset the IP address to the default but mine was already 192.168.1.1

Source: click here

1 comment:

  1. Thanks very much for taking the time to post this it was a lifesaver and brought my router back to life
    Thanks again!
    Gil

    ReplyDelete