Unable to flash firmware (ASUS or Tomato) on RT-N66U (Bricked?)

[legitsu]

this is how my first attempt went with my RT-N66U i got the other day
1. cleared the nvram via the GUI
2. powered the router OFF
3. powered the router on booting in recovery mode and started flashing tomato
:repeated the above steps 8 times without results would upload ok but 5/10m would go by and it would reboot and then kick me back to the CFE recovery page

4. did a 30/30/30 reset and use the WPS/reset combo to clear the nvram before the CFE kicked in <tried this 3 times before it took
finally flashed tomato tomato-K26USB-NVRAM60K-1.28.0503.6MIPSR2Toastman-RT-N-VLan-std and then proceeded to clear the nvram again for good measure after that finally rebooted and brought tomato up

6. flashed tomato-K26USB-NVRAM60K-1.28.0503.6MIPSR2Toastman-RT-N-VLAN-Ext via the tomato GUI and cleared the nvram again for good measure

7. and for laughs I flashed back to the ASUS firmware and then flashed tomato again this time without issue

so the question is the stock CFE/asus firmware causing some sort of issue with initial flashing ? rebooting to early or not uncompromising/writing stuff properly ? or even having issue with formatting the NAND because it seems once tomato gets flashed from that point on its good


also of note incase RMerlin reads this thread I did try his firmware today and had severe issues with the wifi speed with my brothers ps4 it went from 25Mbit/s to ~10Mbit/s flashing back to tomato corrected the issue could have been some kind of coincidence but I don't feel like doing the firmware flash dance to test it

if its one thing I really wish tomato had it would get hardware acceleration/CTF support
the LAN<>LAN performance without is markedly slower witch does have a impact if you are mulipl streaming large >1080p vidoes

 

[klamb55]

I am having difficulty as well. Though I am not in recovery mode I just installed this router and I cannot upload merlin firmware to it through the webui.

I am tied to a mac to administer it so what are my options? Id rather get this installed right away as opposed to waiting..

I have a B1 with 3.0.0.4.374_979


Any help would be great!

 

[RogerSC]

I am having difficulty as well. Though I am not in recovery mode I just installed this router and I cannot upload merlin firmware to it through the webui.

I am tied to a mac to administer it so what are my options? Id rather get this installed right away as opposed to waiting..

I have a B1 with 3.0.0.4.374_979

Any help would be great!

To get your router into recovery mode so you can use tftp with it on a mac, power the router down, press reset button, and hold the reset button while you power it back up. When the power light is blinking slowly, your router is in recovery mode, and you can use tftp to send the firmware binary to your router. Here's a real easy description of how to do this that I ran into the other day and bookmarked (because it's easy *smile*):

http://www.chrishardie.com/2013/02/asus-router-firmware-windows-mac-linux/

 

[Pish180]

Fixed!!

Fix is patience!

I had the same problem and found this page.

My router is the b1 revision.

I followed all the steps and received the same error message everyone is claiming. I flashed using the tomato shibby Aio version.

What I did.
Open a command prompt and run a continuous ping to the router. "ping -t 192.168.1.1" from windows. Gives you a better idea when things start working.
Ran the utility as the steps say too.
The utility said failed to connect...
Instead of trying to re flash for a 4th time, I decided to just let it sit. I waited about 20-30min ish. When I came back the ping was replying. When I looked at the router it then rebooted.

My suggestion is just be patient. The utility is giving correct information... Just misleading status. It is still working under the covers.

Note. My power light stopped blinking and was off during the time of no status. The activity light for my port was active and blinking.

Once the router rebooted everything is smooth as tomato skin. . the wifi lights were on and I was able to reach the webpage.

Hope that helps.

 

[Amulet]

Thank you to everyone on this thread.
I just want to reiterate that PATIENCE is the key!
After many "failed" attempts I read through these posts and then waited 35 minutes for the router to reboot, and it did successfully.
I followed this advice for getting the system into rescue mode:
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=77870&postcount=6

 

[magda136]

We'll, I just started the fifty eleventh flashing of my brand new RT-N66W. Found this thread after hours of surfing. The router went bananas after trying to upgrade FW via GUI 15 min after unpacking. Not a good start.

Now I'm just going to wait over night, restart the router tomorrow and hope for the best.

 

[magda136]

It worked! Left over night, the router is not back in business. Thanks for the patience advide.

 

[vanman]

Recovered ASUS RT-N66U

Thank you to Merlin for this post! I followed your recovery directions exactly, and sure enough everything flashed and recovered perfectly. I realize I'm responding to an old post, but you saved me a lot of angst and it is much appreciated.

 

[4Leaf]

Wait up to an hour or even two if you have too. Sometimes the recovery utility will say that with some of the routers for some reason. for example: I have two rt-n66u's and one of them will say that and take up to 45 mins to complete. and the other one gets done in 4 mins and the recovery utility won't give me that message.

the point is once u start uploading the firmware through recovery utility make sure not to touch anything until ur router reboots no matter what the utility says. That message is false. You could just upload tomato through the asus cfe page. Make sure you are setting ur lan to static ip instead of dhcp automatic mode.

For example:
192.168.1.2
255.255.255.0
leave blank

 

[crashnburn]

Hi,

the above finally worked. I'm not sure why, but I tried one more time and after waiting just ~20 minutes it worked, meaning it rebooted and had tomato loaded.

Which method WORKED for you? 3a or 3b? Please share a bit clearly.
Facing similar issue with RT N16