Back to Stock Factory Firmware Linksys E4200 V2? OpenWrt FW to Linksys FW

It is up to you to continue with the mtd6. Since my device is running on overlapped partitions, on an older LEDE release, that’s why the kernel partition got messed up, but yours has cut the bad part of it by running out of space on mtd5, which is a good thing.

The rootfs dd is an experimentation that you could go on with, or not if you find that too risky.

yeah i went ahead and tried it anyways. but sadly, no difference.

Let me get back to you when I'll be properly installed on OpenWrt.

well, make sure you load up the linksys firmware and do it from there or you'll be stuck with me lmao.

That's what I'm doing since my firsts tryouts. Always flashed from that Linksys firmware to have a backup solution.

yeah, i just didn't know it'd change the other partition for the openwrt update process and that's what screwed me lmao. also didn't know this trying to get back to stock factory was a huge issue and never i guess... encountered yet... but i guess in a way... good thing it happened. already finding things out that need to be changed or attended too.

A good thing here is that a community wanted to help out with suggestions and that is nice to see, I even learned to create the sysupgrade-tar nice. I'd thought you went back to stock by now, but at least the router still is functional after all said and done. regards onefreeman

You probably should get yourself a good serial to usb adapter, open the thing and tap the serial port in order to see why it's failing when booting up the Linksys partition. My guess is that it fails checksum.

You can probably get away without soldering if you find a way to do it.

Yes, it is possible to connect to it via serial without huge effort. I had to do it once to unbrick mine. There's a few details here but as far as I remember it was no problem.

http://www.wolfteck.com/2014/03/01/candyhouse-serial/

i don't think i've tried anything like that in a long while and don't have money to buy anything lol.

@fbradyirl
was that a link of how to connect the connectors or something? again, probably something that has to be in detail or walking me through it.

https://github.com/NoTengoBattery/openwrt/blob/linksys-ea6350v3-mastertrack/files/bin/BackToStock
The link cna't open,my EA6350v3 Want to back to linksys FW,THX

There might be hope to restore a stock firmware using an old version of LEDE maybe:

@fbradyirl: Could you be kind enough, since your E4200v2 is your test machine, to try this and see if you can get back on stock firmware please:

  1. Using Luci, flash LEDE 17.01.4 Factory/Sysupgrade (might not work from OpenWrt 18 and require -F)
  2. Within LEDE, flash stock firmware

If this is successfull with E4200v2, I'll document the whole thing in the Wiki (both E4200v2 and E4500 would then be confirmed to be recoverable this way).

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I don't know if anyone replied back to this test, but it worked for me.
Using Luci, downgraded back to 17.01.4 and then I was able to go back to the stock firmware.
Even, I was able to go back to the non cloud firmware (FW_E4200_2.0.37.131047.SSA).

I was really hoping to use OpenWrt, but ran into into an issue.
Started to notice that the page load took an extra second sometimes. Some games took more time to load or something like an RSS didn't refresh on my computer but it did on my phone without using the wifi.

Apart from that, the router worked correctly.
I was using OpenWrt 18.06.2 on the E4200 v2

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Thank you very much for your feedback! To document the steps in the Wiki, could you be a little bit more specific in the steps you've taken to successfully go back to stock? Kind of info that I need:

  1. Which firmware did you use, Factory or Sysupgrade?
  2. You mention doing it in Luci, anything special you did, any message bypassed, etc.
    a. For sure you did not tic the case to keep settings

Thank you very much for your contribution and first post!

Edit: Did my best to resume in the Wiki as clearly as I could the steps required to go back to stock using @biancoda, @1fyme and @BOBCAMO summaries. Thank you guys!

I tested this method on a Linksys EA4500 and was able to revert from OpenWRT 18.06.2 to LEDE 17.01.4 and flash the stock firmware (EA4500 cloud version) from there. I did not use Luci to downgrade to LEDE. I used SSH instead (and used sysupgrade -F lede-17.01.4-kirkwood-linksys-viper-squashfs-sysupgrade.tar). Then, in LEDE, I used Luci to flash the stock firmware (EA4500 cloud version).

I had trouble directly flashing the stock firmware through SSH + sysupgrade -F -n in OpenWRT 18. The white power indicator light would breathe indefinitely, so I had to switch to the other partition and downgrade from there before flashing the stock firmware.

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sweet.
sorry i haven't checked this in a long time. but, when i get time here, i'll give it a go and hopefully it works for me. glad something seems to be looking up on this subject lol.

HOLY S*** IT WORKED!!!!!

ok, here's my steps of what i did. i was still using and on openwrt 18.06.1

Files Downloaded located in the links, "Sysupgrade" and "stock firmware".

First, i downloaded "lede-17.01.4-kirkwood-linksys-viper-squashfs-sysupgrade.tar" file located in your link "Sysupgrade". Next i opened my router up using WinSCP, went into the "tmp" folder located in the root of the device. copied the entire downloaded .tar file over in the "tmp" folder. closed out WinSCP. opened PuTTy, logged in, cd'ed the tmp folder ran the command as @1fyme mentioned.(codes below)

cd /tmp

Then...

sysupgrade -F lede-17.01.4-kirkwood-linksys-viper-squashfs-sysupgrade.tar

this is the screen shot of what it looked like on my end.

Putty1

(Note: yes i know it shows i'm using the factory.bin file, that was my first attempt and it failed completely and just booted me into what i had already installed on the second partition. guess i forgot to hit "Alt+Print Screen" on the second attempt. but both showed the exact same, just different file used.)

once it was done, it rebooted me into 17.01.4, i went strait to the backup/upgrade tab. then i extracted the file you Linked "stock firmware" for the firmware of the E4200 V2,(see image below)

then when selecting the file to flash i selected the "FW_E4200v2_2.1.41.164606.img" file. it uploaded with no issues, then continued to kick me to the next screen to check the file hash and all that stuff, then i continued. after a minute or so, i opened another browser, put in "192.168.1.1" came right up with everything defaulted with the Linksys smart wifi firmware.
i made it do a factory reset just to make sure, then i even checked for an update and got it updated lol.

so, i would like to thank EVERYONE that has helped with this greatly.... especially you @DjiPi for finally finding the solution to this... hopefully other's who see this and it helps will also thank you. and also thank you @1fyme for the steps for me to follow to try it for my self. i really don't know how else to really say thank you guy's lol. hard to find a community like this and STILL after all this time was still going and attempting to find a solution.
for me... I've stayed away from a LOT of forums because of how they are any more and wish there was a lot more like you all here. especially with being patient with me as i didn't know the command stuff well and so on.
so, again, from me personally... thank you all.

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@mk24, @hnyman, I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about the flashing procedure, but undoubtedly, changes made to the flashing routine or perhaps addresses between LEDE 17.01.4 and now breaks the rollback procedure using the stock firmware for the E4200v2 and EA4500. Any idea on this?

Anyone else kingpin in the flashing routine wants to chime in? I own the device and can run tests.

this procedure worked to restore EA3500 to non-smart linksys fw (did not try directly to regular fw). too shitty i had to open it and connect serial (after erasing partitions with mtd), at least they could've make it pick up audi.ssa from tftp folder like with EA2750 but no tftp or pings observed on this model and bootdelay was set to 0 in environment

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