wrong cfe with no mac address uploaded to ac68u

[Robert Kudrycki]

Hi,

I'm hoping you will take pity on a dumb user and help me out. I was very happy to see goggles99 posts regarding that he was able to get the Asus aimesh working on reflashed Tm ac1900 to ausu rt ac68u firmware by flashing a original ac68u cfe bin.

I was having the same difficulty as others were having in getting the routers to recognize the nodes.
I followed his great instructions but managed to upload the original cfe bin ( with the mac address zeroed out ) instead of the revised cfe bin with the correct mac addresses.

Now my router boots ( seems a normal boot ) but I can not access the router through the browser interface or by a ping from the command prompt. Router shows power, 2gh and 5gh light and any of the lan ports if I connect to them. Neither putty or the winspc will access the router with the 192.168.1.1 address.

Tried all the normal procedures , 30,30,30 reset. WPS reset and other. All with no success.

I would appreciate any help or direction you can provide to help me gain control of my router again.

Thanks in Advance
Bob

 

[Murtaza12]

A bad CFE flash?
Goodbye router.

I flashed my AC66U and ended up bricking it. Only 3 LEDs remain on and it doesn't do anything. Same symptoms as yours.

 

[Robert Kudrycki]

Hopefully some of the really smart people on this forum will guide us to a solution. It was my own fault, I edited the cfe with the correct mac address and then uploaded the unedited cfe. Dumb

 

[scjr]

It appears the only recovery method would be desoldering/programming/soldering,

Maybe someone here, who’s a pro at this, has a different method?

After this post, read the next four posts:

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/asus-routers-cfe-dumps-collection.17793/page-33#post-208506

 

[Robert Kudrycki]

I was hoping that connection through a JTAG might be possible.

 

[ColinTaylor]

It seems unlikely that you would have bricked the router just because you didn't change the WAN MAC address from zeroes (but that's just a guess). The discussion linked to by @scjr is a different scenario from yours.

I suggest that you persist a little longer with trying to get the router into recovery mode and accessing the CFE miniWeb Server. This will require you to set a static IP address on your PC's network interface, 192.168.1.xx if the CFE updated correctly or 192.168.29.xx if it didn't. Leave all cables and USB devices unplugged apart from the LAN cable to your PC.

Good luck.

P.S. Don't bother with 30-30-30 reset, that's a DD-WRT thing not Asuswrt.

 

[scjr]

It seems unlikely that you would have bricked the router just because you didn't change the WAN MAC address from zeroes (but that's just a guess). The discussion linked to by @scjr is a different scenario from yours.

I suggest that you persist a little longer with trying to get the router into recovery mode and accessing the CFE miniWeb Server. This will require you to set a static IP address on your PC's network interface, 192.168.1.xx if the CFE updated correctly or 192.168.29.xx if it didn't. Leave all cables and USB devices unplugged apart from the LAN cable to your PC.

Good luck.

P.S. Don't bother with 30-30-30 reset, that's a DD-WRT thing not Asuswrt.

Thanks for correcting me, Colin. Just learning. I hope with your advice, Bob can get it worked out.

 

[Robert Kudrycki]

I have tried what Colin has suggested. Set a static ip, and numerous attempts at trying to get the router into the recovery mode with no luck. When I try accessing the router from the browser with the 192.168.1.1 I get the connection has timed out. When I try to access with 192.168.29.1 I get the " settings have been updated. Web page will now refresh. Changes have been made to the ip address or port number. you will now be disconnected from the ac68u. To access the setting of the ac68u reconnect to the wireless network and use the updated ip address and port number." but when I try to locate the 2.4gh wireless signal I do not see the ssid or any wireless signal that might be related to the ac68u ????

 

[RMerlin]

It's possible that networking won't work with blank MACs. Next step would be to connect the router with a serial cable and see if you can fix things over a serial connection.

 

[Robert Kudrycki]

I have made some progress. I noticed when I got the Asus " setting have been updated" screen I could not find the 2.4gh signal from the router but it seemed that the light for the 5gh wireless was flashing as if something was communicating with the 5gh wireless signal. I got a laptop that had both the 2.4 and the 5gh wireless and behold there was the router. I connected and got the Asus setup page asking for the typical info. Once I provided it, I can log into the Asus Gui . I have looked through the settings and all looks normal. Not sure what I should do now ??? I'm afraid to reboot it.

 

[Robert Kudrycki]

An additional note. The mac address for the 2.4 and 5gh wireless are shown as 00 00 00 00 00 00

 

[scjr]

That’s great news, Bob. Don’t do anything, until one of the pros here responds.

 

[ColinTaylor]

An additional note. The mac address for the 2.4 and 5gh wireless are shown as 00 00 00 00 00 00

You need to fix that otherwise nothing will work reliably (including access to the router itself). That means updating the CFE again but this time with a valid copy. Be careful, if you upload a corrupted CFE you definitely will brick your router.

P.S. What IP address did your client get/use, 192.168.1.x or 192.168.29.x?

 

[Robert Kudrycki]

The 192.168.1.1 generated a time out, the 192.168.29.1 generated the Asus " Setting have been updated......." screen from the router.

 

[ColinTaylor]

The 192.168.1.1 generated a time out, the 192.168.29.1 generated the Asus " Setting have been updated......." screen from the router.

I saw that you said that earlier but wasn't sure whether things had changed once you switched over to using the wireless connection rather than the wired one. The fact that the router is still using the default T-Mobile IP address suggests that the NVRAM wasn't reset to factory defaults after uploading the new CFE?

 

[Robert Kudrycki]

That makes sense but in the Asus gui indicates that the lan is 192.168.1.1 and now when I connect a Ethernet cable from router lan port to the original laptop I can connect at 192.168.1.1 ????? not 192.168.29.1

 

[Robert Kudrycki]

I tried several times to clear the nvram when I was trying to get into the recovery mode

 

[ColinTaylor]

Sorry to ask an obvious question, but were you changing the static IP address of your PC's network adapters as required throughout this process, or did you leave it to be dynamically assigned?

 

[Robert Kudrycki]

No the laptop was set with a static ip.

 

[SaveMyRouter]

@Robert Kudrycki Have you restored your router?