ASUS RT-AC3200 not entering rescue mode

[RMerlin]

Check the router's IP address through the serial connection, it's usually shown by the CFE.

 

[roblangston]

Sorry if I am missing something or being a bit dense. If I put the router into recovery mode and connect via serial, I get the following output going on a loop:-

Reading ::
TFTP Server.
..tftp retry wait 0
Failed.: Timeout occurred

Reading ::
TFTP Server.
..tftp retry wait 0
Failed.: Timeout occurred​

Am I doing something seriously wrong or is the router beyond repair?

 

[roblangston]

Finally managed to get this to work, left the router sitting in recovery all day whilst I was at work. Came home and the router would now reply to a ping request on 192.168.1.1. Updated to the 380.4 Merlin firmware which I believe is the latest for the AC-3200. Should be good to go, will report back if there are still any issues.

 

[E.S]

I have the same problem with the same router rt ac3200.

Wifi keeps dropping, wired connections are ok but all 3 bands drop like poop from pidgeons.

I’ve reset the router, flashed it to latest firmware but wifi is still messing up, asus support asked me to try rescue mode but the firmware recovery tool always times out and says wireless router is not in rescue mode, but it is in rescue mode, I turn router off, hold reset button and turn it back on whilst still holding reset button and after about 20/30 seconds the power led starts flashing as described in the how to webpage, but it just will not see the router and comes back with wireless router not in rescue mode.

Any idea ? i really dont want to go down the route of buying a uart connector and messing about with it that way.

I presume its a software problem as I cant see why all three bands would mess up at the same time.

Also, if once I have reset and input all the settings again, once I get the wireless up and semi working, if I then change any setting in the wireless config pages, the wifi totally dies and the two cores of the routers cpu are pegged at 100% usage even though their is no traffic, wired or wireless, once that happens I have to reboot the router to get the wifi back up again, but it still continues to drop connections and reconnect every few minutes on my wifi enabled devices.

Anyone got any ideas on how to get this thing to reflash in rescue mode without me having to buy the uart connector.

Merlin, you want to remote into my network and work your magic on my router ?

Its still under warranty so if it bricks its not a problem.

 

[AndreasT]

Just wanted to chime in as I had the same issue with the router not responding to pings in resque mode. On a whim, I unplugged it from the LAN 1 port and plugged it into the LAN 2 port and it responded to pings at once. I was able to flash the firmware using tftp.

 

[strike]

Spent somewhere in the ball park of 6-8 hours working on this exact issue with the ac-3200 model. I never thought to try switching the ethernet ports, I was all set to buy the products listed here in this thread too. So, I just wanted to say THANK YOU AndreasT! I may have spent countless hours resetting the router into rescue mode, clearing nvram, looking at weird products online, pinging the default gateway hoping to see results if I just waited, AND MORE but it was as simple as switching ethernet ports ... Oh well, lesson learned aparently tomato wrt doesn't work on this model.