Hello,
I'm a complete noob. I bought this kit used when we went into lockdown last year because all the classes I teach went online. I successfully got OpenWrt running on the TL-WPA8630P (the wifi part of the kit), but want to switch back to the original firmware. Flashing the firmware from TP-Link doesn't work ("The upload image file does not contain a supported format.) and I can't access "friedzombie.com" to get the stripped version. Does anyone have a stripped version of the V1_170315 firmware that I can use? Any ideas on how to create that from the .bin file that I have from TP-Link? Any ideas how to get back to the OEM?
I thought it would be easy to revert, but it's not. Any help would be greatly appreciate!
Thanks!
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to run imagebuilder or tplink-safeloader. I'm obviously in way over my head.
I had no idea that it was so incredibly difficult to revert to OEM firmware. It was easy to flash the OpenWrt firmware, but not at all straightforward flashing the OEM and I made a backup before switching to OpenWrt.
Can I run imagebuilder through terminal? or within OpenWrt under Software?
You download and run Imagebuilder on any x86_64 Linux OS (but not the router itself) and run those commands from a terminal. Someone should probably make a website that can run that on a user supplied file!
@dkonstrkt If you prefer, I can make an image for you. I'll PM you for your e-mail. Which firmware from here were you running before?
Wow - I feel much better about reaching out to the forum despite being so ignorant. Thank you for explaining that in easy-to-understand language. I could setup Linux on an old machine (or run it on a virtual machine), but I would be incredibly grateful if you can just quickly make the image.
I was running TL-WPA8630P(EU)_V1_170327 before.
Sorry @dkonstrkt , I was mistaken about this. It turns out the v1 firmware files are a different format than what the tplink-safeloader firmware tool understands - it seems that process from the v2 wiki is only valid for the v2 units, so you can ignore it.
~/Downloads/openwrt-imagebuilder-ath79-generic.Linux-x86_64/staging_dir/host/bin/tplink-safeloader -z ~/Downloads/TL-WPA8630P\(EU\&UK\&CH\)_V1_170327/wpa8630pv1_1_0_4_up\(170327\)-20170327.bin -o wpa8630pv1_1_0_4_up\(170327\)-20170327.sysupgade.bin
DEBUG: can not find fwuphdr
Error can not read the partition table (fwup-ptn): Success
So I don't know what the procedure for the V1 units is, but it might be TFTP recovery with instructions like these:
Maybe someone with a v1 unit can reply to this thread to confirm if its supported, and what the TFTP details are, or you might be able to find someone on the forums with a v1 unit to ask.
Once this information is verified to work, someone should make a proper wiki page for the V1 unit with those recovery details.
(As a hint, setting your PC to the the typical IP addresses of the TFTP server and using Wireshark to see incoming TFTP requests is a good way to verify that the unit tries to do a TFTP recovery at boot, which would mean your on the right track).
Originally the TL-WR1043NDv1 shipped without push-button tftp recovery, this feature was only retrofitted to the OEM firmware (and its bootloader) sometime in 2013(?), so there will be a lot of TL-WR1043NDv1 devices out there without any enduser compatible form of recovery.
If push-button tftp is supported, it follows the 'normal' ways of recovery for the time, as in the file needs to be served under the correct name from a tftpd and the correct IP address. Recovering is best done with OpenWrt's factory image, if an OEM image is used, it mustn't contain a bootloader update in front - if it does, the router would bootloop afterwards and the crucial wireless calibration data is lost (overwritten by the oversized OEM firmware).
I'm reviving this old thread since this is the first hit I got when I had the same problem - and then it has no solution. Turns out that you just need to strip the first 0x238 (i.e. 568) bytes:
