Dear all,

 

I want to thanks to user "trouble" since he allowed me to recover an old TD-W8960N make it working again.

 

Here is the link: https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/80133?replyId=157912

 

And here it is his procedure:

 

To get into rescue/recovery mode you hold the reset button while powering on the router. The lights slowly come on compared to turning it on without reset button. How you get out of this mode is beyond me without modifying the firmware and flashing that onto it.

Just as I said jimasek, it's undocumented, so I never knew this mode without searching for my problem and discovering other brands pretty much follow the same generic page and mode.

So if anyone does get stuck in this here's the steps to take:

Download the latest firmware for your router and extract the bin file.

Get yourself a hex editor and open up the bin file.

Note: This may only apply to TD-W8960N Ver 4.0
We need to remove all bytes between offset 0x0 (the start of the file) to 0x1FF (or 0x200?). You should have either binary 36 at the start now, or the number 6 in ASCII.

Set up your computer's network manually, e.g. IP: 192.168.1.10 NM: 255.255.255.0 GW: 192.168.1.1 DNS settings not needed.

Now open up your browser and go to: http://192.168.1.1 which should bring you to that update firmware page if you really are stuck in rescue/recovery mode.

Warning: All risks with updating firmware still apply.
Now just click the button to find your saved firmware and update it.

Let it take it's time, it suggests 2 minutes, but I gave it 5 minutes. Once that is done, you should notice the WiFi light has come back on.

Now hard reset the modem, hold it down for 4 or more seconds until all the lights flash and release it.

Let it do it's thing, then re-open 192.168.1.1 and login: admin/admin.

From here you should know what to do!

Cheers,

Trouble

 

I would like only to add that you can use also online hexeditor HexEd.it here: https://hexed.it/

 

It worked like a charm - and all you need is a browser. Just remove the first 512bs. You can do with dd also (if you have it):

 

dd if=your_original_flash.bin of=your_recovery_flash.bin skip=1 bs=512

 

as suggested by user "botva" in the ssame thread here: https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/80133?replyId=198910

 

Unfortunately the thread is closed (perhaps the router is too old), so I am starting this new one only to recap, keep it alive in 2022 (2023!) and to thanks this two guys for their advices.

 

Just my two cents.

 

Peace,

S.