Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Upgrades Technology

Firmware Upgrades Creating Doorstops? 69

Posted by Cliff from the delicate-devices dept.
Michael Droettboom asks: "I recently purchased a Linksys WMLS11B. Nice enough unit for the money. One gotcha, though: when upgrading the firmware (past its refundable date where I bought it), my machine crashed, turning the WMLS11B into a doorstop along with it. Linksys has offered to replace the unit, but I don't want it if the box is so easily corrupted. I have always been on a strict policy of updating firmware on all my devices, but was wondering if anyone else has had experience with devices so broken as to not recover from a broken upgrade?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Firmware Upgrades Creating Doorstops? More

Firmware Upgrades Creating Doorstops?

Comments Filter:

  • Just reflash it... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by shepd ( 155729 )
    If you're lucky there'll be a jtag-type port on the unit where you can reflash the memory.

    If not, bring on the soldering iron and fix it properly. :-)

  • Upgrading... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rawg ( 23000 ) <phill@ken[ ]r.com ['oye' in gap]> on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:29PM (#9849882) Homepage
    First: don't fix it if it isn't broken. Never upgrade the firmware unless your having problems. Never upgrade the firmware over a wireless link.

    Next: Did you know that D-Link has a three year warranty on their stuff? I just found out today while RMA'ing a few 810+ bridges.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • We're NOT talking about a router with a firewall. Click the link to the product. "The Linksys Wireless-B Music System lets you bring the digital music stored on your computer to your Home Entertainment Center, without running cables through the house. Using a wireless connection, the Music System finally frees your digital music collection from those little computer speakers to play in full glory through your stereo system." Afraid somebody is going to hack your gibson through your wireless music system
        • and assuming he's using a non-switched home lan, if you get into that, you can get into the rest of his network. now what was your point, again?
      • First: don't fix it if it isn't broken. Never upgrade the firmware unless your having problems.

        That's like saying that you should never install OS security patches until someone has broken into your PC and that you should never update your anti-virus software unless your computer has become infected with a virus.

        Umm. No. If your OS has a security problem (IE: A Bug) then you need to update it because it's broken. Downloading Anti-Virus Definition Lists is not updating, it's keeping your virus definiti

  • Wha? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by icemax ( 565022 ) <matthew_d_stone.hotmail@com> on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:32PM (#9849896) Homepage
    Don't bitch if the problem was cause by your end. How many devices can you begin a flash and then have your computer crash and still use the device?
    • I strongly disagree. I think the problem is that we have to flash these devices at all. Instead of spending the time to engineer and test a device thoroughly companies rush to get their product to market as soon as possible, even if the functionality is half-working. They rely on the user to install new firmware to fix bugs in the device, turning all of their users into beta testers for their products. This seems to be a growing trend be it games, or cell phones, or computer peripherals. So bitch away.
      • Your new here right?
      • I'd rather have a router that works well enough for my home net now than server-running-debian-stable perfect in 6 months. Especially when said perfction can be achieved with a bios flash. And we may want new features, anyway.
    • A lot of devices give you a way out in the event of a bad flash. I've had downtime resulting from it but never turned any device into a brick. I'm surprised to hear his linksys is giving him problems.
    • This is a flaw with the hardware design, and not with the consumer. Crashes during a firmware flash can happen, and they should be designed around. Don't blame bad design on a user!

      Example: All Compaq desktop and server machines have had a feature sinced at least 1990 that allows you to recover from a bad firmware flash. Not too many folks new about it. Basically, you could throw all the dip switches on SWB6 on, and the machine could boot to read firmware from a floppy. The prompt was beeps, but it wor

  • Face it.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:33PM (#9849903)
    This is consumer.. trash.

    Most, if not all things made for consumers are made with this lack of quality in mind. Motherboards at least have a replaceable chip (unlike some dell models). Some high-ish quality X86 boards have 2 bioses that keep a known good copy on second chip.

    You must be aware that most devives with updateable firmware also suffer this.. problem. Some older graphics cards actually had removable Bioses, as well did scsi cards.

    Once device I know that does not have this problem is the stable hardware on teh Compaq Proliant servers. There's extremly stable text mode drivers along with keyboard imput and ide drivers. You update the upgradeable bioses on the hard drive. Something causes problems? Reload from cd and redo the "bios" partition.

    Lucent USB wifi modules also do something similar... The driver for the host computer updates "onload" the firmware. A firmware updfate on those are as simple as telling the driver to upload this file instead of this other file.

  • Dear Slashdot (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I was working on my car the other day, changing some things in the engine, but got distracted by a phone call and lost the parts I was changing. Now my car's engine doesn't work. The car dealership has offered to fix it if I tow it down there, but I don't really want a car that can be broken so easily. Shouldn't cars be less difficult to break?
  • happened to me with my linksys router. I decided well, I've been wanting wifi anyway...
    • Actually, that's exactly how I ended up with wifi. I was flashing the router to try to fix a problem that was Adelphia's fault all along. Too bad they couldn't figure that out or fix it for me.

  • Most vendors have clear disclaimers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Artifex ( 18308 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:39PM (#9849926) Journal
    Many vendors say clearly don't upgrade if the router, mobo, or whatever else you have is currently working properly for you. Sometimes new BIOS revisions are specifically created for new hardware revisions that are slipstreamed in, and they don't always properly document that.

    Unless you've read in the changelog that it patches a hole/bad code or adds functionality that you need, don't take the chance that it's going to crater. Even if your vendor is nice enough to replace the component out of warranty, you're still going to be inconvenienced waiting.

    • The other side to this problem is that they don't publish a lot of things that they fix, expecially when they involve data corruption. This is largely due to percieved legal liability.

      Oddly enough, when you call tech support, one of the first things that they ask you to do is upgrade the firmware!

  • Indeed (Score:5, Informative)

    by Judg3 ( 88435 ) <jeremy@pa[ ]ck.com ['vle' in gap]> on Friday July 30, 2004 @10:56PM (#9849993) Homepage Journal
    This is why I use Gigabyte [giga-byte.com] Motherboards almost exclusively, with their dual-BIOS onboard. If the machine crashes during a flash, all I need to do is reboot and it'll fire up on the backup BIOS and I'm in the running again.

    Really though, I wouldn't bitch about the device not being able to recover itself. Adding on self-healing abilities (Basically fixing end user screw ups) adds parts to the device, which adds to the cost. It is a *consumer* level device, remember, so price is the big concern. Stop whining and get a new one - you screwed it up, the company isn't to blame here.

    • Re:Indeed (Score:2, Informative)

      by 10101001 10101001 ( 732688 )
      The thing is that when bios firmware started coming out, there was a lot of people who lost their machine to a flashing mishap when meant the manufacturer had to take it back and fix it. After a while, the manufacturers started include a boot-block bios which is never overwritten but provides enough functionality to auto-flash the bios if the bios is corrupt. Not surprisingly, this not only made consumers (like me) happy.

      The truth is, the majority of people adventurous enough to flash their bios are more

  • WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:10PM (#9850064) Journal
    Let's get this straight: as it stands, your device is broken and the manufacturer is offering to replace it with another unit and you're not happy with that situation?

    Just what do you think would constitute good customer service on their part if replacing a dead unit with a working one isn't to your satisfaction? Just what do you want out of Linksys? Blood?

    If Linksys told you to go take a running jump and were of no help whatsoever I'd understand you having a beef with them but they've done what they should do in this situation and yet you're still not happy.

    There's no pleasing some people.

    • Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wpc4 ( 169892 ) <`wpc4' `at' `cynical.us'> on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:37PM (#9850189) Homepage Journal
      Ditto. Get the new one, ebay it and go get something else at the very least.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • This reminds me, it's the weekend, need to run emerge -uUD world...

      • Re:WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by schon ( 31600 )
        I honestly don't see why firmware upgrades should leave devices as bricks

        It's called "you get what you pay for".

        If you buy something cheap, expect it to *BE* cheap. Don't bitch and whine when you find out that it hasn't got the features of a more expensive unit.

        Adding a backup firmware would increase the cost of the unit. Consumers want it cheap, so the manufacturers leave it out to make the consumers happy.

        It's simple economics.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • It wasnt defective until it broke, and it broke because of an external influence. The unit is cheap BECAUSE it doesnt have expensive features, such as dual firmware etc. Would you call it defective because it doesnt have a built in surge protector?
            • Comment removed based on user account deletion
              • But the user did not follow the instructions, The computer crashed during the flashing process... Where the instructions stated it should continue running until the flashing is complete... If the vendor-supplied firmware update program crashed then yes it is their fault, if the crash had nothing to do with the firmware then it's the end user who is at fault.
      • I honestly don't see why firmware upgrades should leave devices as bricks - at the very least, a non-overridable "boot rom" (which normally hands over to the firmware, but can instead run a rescue program in the event of mishap)

        Supermicro motherboards had something like this for years. If your BIOS is corrupt you put in a floppy with a new image and hold down some special key combo to activate the emergency flash feature.

        Only had to use it once, on a test system, saved me the time of having to find anoth
    • Just what do you think would constitute good customer service on their part if replacing a dead unit with a working one isn't to your satisfaction? Just what do you want out of Linksys? Blood?

      Uh, how about making hardware that can't be destroyed by normal user behavior? Just a thought.
  • 1. What feature did you NEED, when you flashed the firmware.

    2. Why didn't you buy hardware that had that feature to begin with.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • It's NOT a router. It's an 802.11b music device.
      • Oh come ON!

        Ukranian hackers? Backdoor access to his router, internet connection and personal network?

        Firstly, it was a freaking wireless music player, not a router. Secondly, even if it was, how does that give "Ukranian" hackers access to his personal network? I've never seen a hardware router that could sniff packets or would divulge any personal information, or connect to other computers on the network in file retreival mode (the closest thing to this is passive upload TFTP). The best they could do
      • I really don't think he absolutely HAD to flash-update a wireless music device, which probably sits on a private net behind NAT anyway...

        Lets see - your computer dies during flash update of some device. Just about whose fault is that? The company is willing to replace the unit - you should be happy they didn't tell you to fuck off.
  • I gave my original first model Linksys wi-fi 4port dsl router to a friend. In helping him set it up, I flashed it for him since it was done in years and lots of useful changes have been made. So 1 day later, another friend comes over to help him with this computer setup again. He insists to flash the Linksys even though my friend insisted that I had already done it. "Oh it won't hurt to do it again!" And he promptly flashed the firmware from a different (but similarly spelled name) model. Instant brick!
  • I recently noticed that MSI had released a new version of the BIOS for my motherboard, and I decided it can't hurt to upgrade. I flashed the BIOS from Windows (the other option would be a DOS floppy, but my box does not have a floppy drive). There were no errors untill I rebooted into Windows, then everything went wrong. As soon as there would be any significant hdd activity, the computer would just freeze, and it would reboot a few seconds later.

    I decided to roll back to the previous version of the BIOS,
    • Before upgrrading a bios, always update the motherboard drivers for the OS as well; including the IDE controller drivers.

      There is a possibility that the new bios also updates the code for the IDE controller which your older OS driver do not know how to handle...

      • All good, but Stay AWAY FROM THE BETA DRIVERS!!

        I've just had to reinstall everything over the weekend because the 320b version of the IDE drivers would just not uninstall. (the system would freeze as soon as I would dare try to touch the main dll)

        Here's the story [viaarena.com]
    • There's a simple answer to not having a floppy drive:

      1. Get an image of a Win98 emergency repair disk (the one which includes CD-ROM drivers). These can sometimes be found online, or ask a friend.
      2. Prepare a CD containing the BIOS update program, the new BIOS and a copy of the old BIOS.
      3. Use the image of the win98 floppy as an El-Torito boot image on your CD.
      4. Burn it, and voila! Instant DOS boot disk which doesn't require a floppy drive.

  • Touchy! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @01:40AM (#9850724) Homepage Journal
    Linksys has offered to replace the unit, but I don't want it if the box is so easily corrupted.
    Well then, you better not buy anything with upgradable firmware. Perhaps there are devices that can survive having an upgrade interrupted, but I've never seen any. I have seen a of lot devices where the documentation warns you about just this kind of situation. If this small risk scares you, that's why god invented UPSs!

    My experience with Linksys routers says "buy from them next time because you know their stuff works." Now you add to that, "they'll replace the hardware even if the screwup wasn't their fault." Sounds pretty positive to me.

    • Well then, you better not buy anything with upgradable firmware. Perhaps there are devices that can survive having an upgrade interrupted, but I've never seen any.

      They certainly exist.

      The Ascend Pipeline ISDN routers had enough flash space for two ROM images. When upgrading, it would write the new image into unused space; only when it was fully uploaded and verified would it mark it as the active image.

      It's also perfectly possible to put a simple boot loader in ROM that has just enough brains to either
      • The Ascend Pipeline ISDN routers had enough flash space for two ROM images.

        I think that the parent poster hasn't ever used real routing equipment - Linksys is hardly in the same league as Ascend (before they were bought out.) Pipeline products retailed for 5-10x what that Linksys sells for.

        It's called 'you get what you pay for.' Consumer-grade stuff is cheap - when you buy it, you have to expect corners to be cut.
        • It's called 'you get what you pay for.' Consumer-grade stuff is cheap - when you buy it, you have to expect corners to be cut.

          It could be that the guys at Linksys did a full cost/benefit analysis, that they determined that the price of additional ROM or a little extra development was just more expensive than the time and money lost to support calls and free replacement hardware, and the lost consumer confidence.

          But my guess is that it just didn't occur to them. They're used to making uncomplicated thing
          • >They still haven't fully figured out that they're a consumer products company, making things for people with no technical savvy, whose main means of resolving a problem is power-cycling the hardware and seeing if it gets better. And when it doesn't get better, they say, "Boy, Company X makes crappy stuff. I'll buy from Company Y from now on."

            Sure they have. They operate under different names like most consumer companies. When the consumer switches to company Y, there's a chance it'll be Linksys and t
    • Perhaps there are devices that can survive having an upgrade interrupted, but I've never seen any.

      Empeg car-player, Rio Karma, Rio Central -- in fact, basically the entire Empeg/Rio line, possibly even the little MP3 flash players. You have a tiny bootblock, not field-writable and only smart enough to boot or reflash the actual firmware. Many flash chips have a special block at address 0, for just this purpose, which can be made non-field-writable.

      OP is right, making a device that can be doorstopped by a

  • IBM xSeries!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Zaffle ( 13798 ) on Saturday July 31, 2004 @04:04AM (#9851145) Homepage Journal
    I love IBM hardware, its always been good to me, but I've got a related story.

    an x225 that was less than 2 weeks old had a motherboard failure, IBM sent a tech out who replaced the motherboard, all nice and good. However the last thing the tech did was flash the bios. Its the last thing the motherboard ever did too. The replacement motherboard was toast. (And believe it or not, it was the last x225 motherboard in the country at the time).

    Either way, apparently the flash util erased the bios, but didn't write a new one. Now according to IBM there are procedures in place to stop that from happening and if it does happen, to recover, but none of that worked.

    Afaik, when you first burn eeproms, you can mask off a region that can't be reburnt, thus allowing you to have recovery, but I'm guessing this didn't work on this system.

    Either way, EIGHT days after the motherboard died, we had a replacement server. I must say though, this has been the only bad experience I've had with IBM support.

  • My Linksys "horror story" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dustman ( 34626 ) <dleary.ttlc@net> on Saturday July 31, 2004 @10:06AM (#9852098)
    I have a linksys BEFSR81v3 router.

    I updated the firmware, and afterwards, Half-Life based games would not work. I could play for up to 5 minutes, then it would halt with an "invalid packet" message of some sort.

    I searched around online, and found other people with similiar problems, and forums saying that Linksys was aware of the problem, it had to do with fragmentation of large packets.

    The real problem was that their web/FTP did not have any copies of the previous firmware, so I couldn't revert.

    I called up tech support. Several times. Usually, the people I was talking to had strong accents that made them hard to understand. On top of that, when I called and asked for the previous firmware, they were basically going to the FTP site themselves, and emailing me a file (that I could have easily downloaded, and was not the correct file).

    I started off polite, the first few phone conversations. Several phone conversations (and two days after I first called), this is what my side of the conversation sounded like:

    "I have VERSION 3 of the BEFSR81, do you understand? Yes, I have been to your FTP site, and looked all over it. I do not want the firmware for version 2 of the router. If you read its text file, it SPECIFICALLY SAYS IT WILL NOT WORK WITH VERSION 3."

    Several hours later, what do I get, but yet another copy of version 2 firmware that won't work on my router.

  • I don't know about Linksys but there should be an option on how to erase the corrupted firmware. On a D-Link router you just insert a paperclip into the reset hole, take out the power adapter and insert it back again, then take out the paper clip, do this real slow and log onto the router. It won't ask for a username/password and you will only have 1 page to update the firmware, everything would have been erased. These devices are really hard to kill completely.
  • Check out this page [sveasoft.com] on recovery procedures.

Slashdot Top Deals

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato

Close