Can't go back from Tomato to Buffalo firmware on router

[Laya Maheshwari]

Hello.

I got a Buffalo WHR-G54S router from my brother that he had flashed with Tomato firmware before handing over to me.

I am not comfortable using third-party firmware and wanted to go back to the original Buffalo firmware. I went to their site and downloaded the firmware appropriate for my model number.

The download was in a .zip archive that decompressed to reveal an .enc file. First of all, I have never come across this extension. Tomato did not even recognize it when I tried to upgrade the firmware using that file. I changed the extension to .bin and later to .trx but both times, the upgrade failed because Tomato said that "The file has an invalid header."

I installed DD-WRT just to see if I could upgrade via that but even that didn't recognize the .enc file. And when I tried upgrading by changing the extension to .bin and .trx, it failed.

Now, I've gone back to Tomato from DD-WRT but I still want to go back to the original Buffalo firmware. How do I do that? What will recognize an .enc file? How do I get a .bin/.trx file from this?

Please help me!

[monkey13]

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Flash_Your_Buffalo_WBR-G54,_WLA-G54,_...

Doesn't say there is much success in doing this. Looks like you will be more likely to do harm than succeed.

Why are you so anti Tomato? I used to use it on something and found it to be fine.

[giantsnyy]

It's really a better choice once you get used to it. Trust me... the buffalo firmware sucks.

[+BudMan MVC]

I would say you should be thanking your brother for saving you the time putting a better firmware on the device in the first place.

But I am curious to your logic in not feeling comfortable non native firmware - what do you think is going to happen other than more features and better stability? ;)

but according to this

http://www.dd-wrt.co...dex.php/Buffalo

WHR-G54S, WHR-HP-G54, WZR-HP-G54 specifics

Once you flash to DD-WRT on the Buffalo WHR-G54S/WHR-HP-G54/WZR-RS-G54, you may want to flash back to the Buffalo firmware. The Buffalo Factory Revert files can be uploaded from the dd-wrt GUI to restore the factory firmware. You can now flash the English version directly...

http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/down.php?path=downloads%2Fothers%2Fbuffalo+factory+revert+/

where are you seeing .enc or .trx files?

[primexx]

you know how to flash firmware but try stupid **** like renaming the extension? you would have bricked it had DD-WRT not done checks first.

stay with either Tomato or DD-WRT, it's far superior to the factory firmware.

[+Warwagon MVC]

You could always try uploading this photo to your router

[c.grz]

I have two of these devices; one with DD-WRT and the other with the default firmware and let me tell you that you'll regret going back to the default firmware. Stay on Tomato or DD-WRT.

[+Warwagon MVC]

I found this site. Use with caution. Not my fault if you brick your router. Apparently these are factory Buffalo firmwares in bin format. I'm assuming if in fact that does get you back to a factory buffalo firmware you will then be able to upgrade it to the newest version using the one you downloaded from their site.

http://www.dd-wrt.co...actory+revert+/

Looks like the Budman beat me to this!

[Tha Bloo Monkee]

I'm with budman, why are you not comfortable with 3rd party firmware? Several of them are open-source, so you don't have to worry about any "legal" issue if that's your worry (some people are just like that?).

For now, I won't buy a router that isn't compatible with 3rd party firmware (such as DD-WRT), because it gives you so many more features that you wouldn't have otherwise.

[Laya Maheshwari]

The reason I wanted to try the original firmware once was because my Net connection (which works flawlessly on LAN) ws giving me some problems with Wifi. I wanted to see if maybe, just maybe by using the original firmware (I even planned to install Buffalo's utility software then), the scenario would be different. Moreover, the sheer concept of being able to set up the Wifi (password et al) via Windows itself was something that appealed to simple, noob me (I couldn't do that over Tomato).Maybe you'll find the reasons lame and insufficient but I didn't see any *harm* in trying to go to the original firmware. Maybe I would realize in a jiffy that I was better off with Tomato all along and hence go back.

So I downloaded the v1.20 patched firmware for the G54S from the directory you linked to. I updated to that firmware from Tomato's Admin panel. The process went smoothly and the router rebooted.

But, after that, nothing works. I tried going to 192.168.1.1 and it didn't open. The back of my router specifies an address 192.168.11.1 but even that didn't open. I opened Google but got the message that DNS lookup failed.

So, turns out my celebrations were premature. Any help here? Have I actually bricked my router?

[El Marto]

What sort of lights you got going on? Have you tried 192.168.0.1 (sometimes differs)?

[Laya Maheshwari]

I get the Power light and the Wireless light (stable green), which is just the same as before...when it used to work. Worth nothing, now my laptop doesn't even detect the Wifi on it, even when I plug all cables in properly. I tried 192.168.0.1 too but it didn't work. The back of my router says that its IP address is 192.168.11.1 though, so I'm not surprised. Why THAT address won't open too is what surprises me.

A user on another forum recommended going through this guide - http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Recover_from_a_Bad_Flash#Buffalo_WHR-HP-G54_soft_repair

I went to that link and tried to follow the steps in it as closely as I could.

1. Set your computers ethernet cable interface to static IP address: 192.168.11.2, Network Mask: 255.255.255.0 and Gateway IP: 192.168.11.1
   
2. Connect the network cable to the bricked routers LAN port 4
   
3. In Windows cmd interface start a "ping -t -w 10 192.168.11.1", continuous ping every 10 milliseconds
   
4. Push the reset button (located in the buttom of the router), and keep it activated
   
5. Unplug the routers 5v power cable, count slowly to 5 and reconnect the power cable.
   
6. Count once again slowly to 5 and release the reset button.
   

If you are lucky you will see 3-5 ping answers from your router on IP: 192.168.11.1 before the ping command again start responding with the timeout message.

I got this far perfectly. It's the part after that's giving me a problem. I don't know which TFTP script is being referred to or even what it is. The tutorial has this section -

"Another way is to use a (script) cmd file under Windows" from this page:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Installation#TFTP_Flashing_Buffalo_Routers_under_Windows

But there is no such section on the provided link (even a Ctrl + F search yielded nothing).

I went on my own way and tried to use the TFTP feature (after enabling it, of course) in Windows 7 by going to Command Prompt and entering what this tutorial told me to. (http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Recover_from_a_Bad_Flash#Recovering_with_TFTP)

I got an "Access is Denied" message. I tried the DrayTek Router Tools but couldn't understand how to use it. I found other simple GUI TFTP clients but even they couldn't do anything.

Please, please help!

[+BudMan MVC]

Question for you - you say you updated the firmware via the gui..

but then

'But, after that, nothing works. I tried going to 192.168.1.1 and it didn't open. The back of my router specifies an address 192.168.11.1 but even that didn't open"

What IP address did your machine have?? Was it on the 192.168.1.0/24 network or the 192.168.11.0/24 ?? You can not just expect to talk to an IP if its not on your network.

I would suggest you set your machine to dhcp for its interface.. And connect to the router, and reboot your machine -- does it get an IP or not?? What is the output from ipconfig /all

If you got an IP then use the gateway it says to connect to your router. If you get something like 169.254.x.x then we know atleast that your routers dhcp server is not on - doesn't really mean the router is bricked, etc.

Please before we try flashing anything -- lets see if we can even ping the router after its booted. Normally the dhcp server is enabled by default so with a full reset like putting back factory firmware it should be on and hand out IPs to any box connected to it.

[Laya Maheshwari]

Okay people.

First of all, sorry for not replying all this while. My Internet connection actually died on me.

I got a new Internet connection set up just yesterday and tried setting up the Wifi on that. TFTP and other things didn't help. I followed the steps in the first quote box from my post above, got the ping responses and then reset the router a couple of times. It justt started working. I got continuous ping responses. I then just setup things according to my preferences and I finally have working Wifi!

Thanks a lot to everyone for your help. Wouldn't have been able to do all this without the snippets you posted. :)

PS - You all were right. The official Buffalo firmware sucks. I'll go back to Tomato at some point, now that I know my Internet connection supports stable Wifi.