Archer AX23 Firmware recovery

Archer AX23 Firmware recovery

Archer AX23 Firmware recovery
Archer AX23 Firmware recovery
6 hours ago - last edited 4 hours ago
Model: Archer AX23  
Hardware Version: V1
Firmware Version: n/a

Unfortunately there was a thread about this already but it's been locked despite being recent. [ https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/707640 ]

 

As a preamble over time I've given up on almost every feature this router advertised. The webUI is terrible, limited, nothing works as expected,. support says they will get back to you, doesn't...so I decided to risk Open-WRT. It works for the most part and has the features I'd want save for one glaring issue, the WAN stops working every so often. Nothing in the syslog or dmesg. I can't find anything to sus out what's happening. So I had decided to continue the trend I've been following which was given up on the advertised features and just port forward to another machine to do the thing this router was supposed to be able to do.

 

This leads me to the post. The de-bricking instructions don't work. You get the recovery page, upload the firmware and once it hits 100% there is a super fast unreadable flash and then the page is as it started. Just the small blurb and input to select/upload the firmware.

 

One of the key points of the previous topic [ https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/707640 ] was [ https://github.com/argsnd/tp-link-stock-firmware-converter ] which one of the posters said worked for them. However for me all it does is spit out a file named sysupgrade.bin of 0k. I've tried from the link, I've built from source, I've tried in more than one browser. Browser console output might suggest it's not finding the partition structure it expects. I've also tried older bin.

 

Might someone have some insight on the correct way to strip the official firmwares? Reading docs and searching is just a circle of warnings of outdated info, wrong info, vague info...a real swell time to be sure!

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#1
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5 Reply
Re:Archer AX23 Firmware recovery
4 hours ago

  @nPHYN1T3 

 

Hi,

 

Out of interest I just tested both https://argsnd.github.io/tp-link-stock-firmware-converter/index.html as well as the other link from the bottom of that page (where it says "Please use ... if this tool gives you blank files") and both websites returned me files that had reasonable file sizes (not 0 bytes). In particular I tested with the firmware versions AX23V1 EU 1.1.3 and AX23V1 US 1.0.7.

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#2
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Re:Archer AX23 Firmware recovery
4 hours ago - last edited 4 hours ago

Well then if I copy paste the link in your message I see the note about blank files but if I use the html from the repo or the other links to it there is nothing about the .app version. I'm not sure how that was missed as I read everything and built from source (not like the build process was involved but I did read everything I saw! heh)

 

The .app [ https://tplink-firmware-stripper.vercel.app/ ] link does seem to work so thank you for seeing/catching that. Again maybe it's just been too many days of testing and debugging and my eyes are glazed over and brain turned to mush.

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#3
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Re:Archer AX23 Firmware recovery
4 hours ago - last edited 3 hours ago

hmm I am trying to update and anything I do says illegal link in content...this might be whack while I try to figure out what word or phrase is making this fail to let me post.

 

Well that was terrifying...and didn't work despite the stripped bin file. Applying the firmware via openwrt
it wiped the drive so when booting you got the "you are bricked" orange LED. So like the emergency factory restore. However again trying to use a real/normal tp-link firmware on that update page it was the same as before. It gets to 100%, fast flash of something you can't read and blam nothing.

 

So fearing the worst I tried...the openwrt firmware on the emergency restore. This time it got to 100% and DID something...so again I'm running openwrt.

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#4
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Re:Archer AX23 Firmware recovery
3 hours ago

  @nPHYN1T3 

 

What I find weird is that the two websites produce different files, yet both say the generated files are to be flashed via OpenWrt. I wonder how that could work?

 

https://argsnd.github.io/tp-link-stock-firmware-converter/index.html appears to remove the first 8212 bytes from the TP-Link stock firmware, while the other *vercel.app removes 131584 bytes (just like it says it does).

That doesn't make sense to me.

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#5
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Re:Archer AX23 Firmware recovery
3 hours ago
This whole thing is rather messy in general but I find it amusing if not off putting that the openwrt is the only thing that consistently works from the recovery "bricked" system. I somewhat suspect the initial wrt install changes something on the disk that makes future tplink firmware bail but that's just spit balling. I've been banging my head on this stuff for a week so the brain iz moosh!
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#6
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