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Soft bricked

Had an old TP-Link Archer C9 router that I was messing around with. Flashed DD-WRT but then decided to flash back to factory image, this somehow bricked my router, it weent into a boot loop, where the LED would turn on for a few seconds, then turn off and repeat; holding the reset button didn't do anything since the firmware is corrupted, and the router is now soft bricked.

This could potentially work with other router, but I'ved not tested it with other router, if you're using different router, proceed as your own risk.

Setup

In terms of hardware, there isn't anything extra that you need, unless you want to use the serial recovery method, which is the same method as what's listed below, except you connect over serial instead of LAN. in that case you'll need a USB to UART/TTL adapter (refer to the PDF for serial recovery).

Procedure

  1. Connect the computer and router with ethernet cable, connect to the LAN port (Ethernet 1)
  2. Download Tftpd64 (Quick download option) | Mirror
  3. Download Firmware and extract the .bin file
  4. Disable all Windows Firewall (control panel)
  5. Configure IPv4 for your computer (control panel)
    • IP: 192.168.0.66 (if your router uses 192.168.1.X, then use 192.168.1.66 instead)
    • Subnet: 255.255.255.0
    • Gateway: (leave empty)
    • DNS: (leave empty)
  6. Launch Tftpd64, and switch to Log viewer tab
  7. Turn on the router if not already on, and hold the reset button for 5 seconds, you should see entries show up in the log, look for the entry that says something like Read request for file <ArcherC9v1_tp_recovery.bin> *
  8. Rename the .bin file from step 3 to match the file name the router is looking for.
  9. In Tftp6d4, click Browse to change the Current Directory to where your bin file is.
  10. Hold the reset button again for more than 5 seconds, you should see Tftpd64 start transfering the file to the router, then wait for restart and boot up, do not shutdown the router. You can close Tftpd64 after the file have transfered.
  11. The restart and boot up will take roughly 2 minutes, once booted, you should be able to access the router using the ip address 192.168.0.1
  12. Change your IPv4 back to automatic and re-enable your fireware.

*If you've tried both 192.168.0.66 and 192.168.1.66, and Tftpd64 does not show any entries on router reset, you'll have to use the serial method