Slashdot Mirror
Firmware Upgrades Creating Doorstops?
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?"
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.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
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.
The above is not worth reading.
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?
__________
Love conquers all... except CANCER
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.
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.
Get off my launchpad!
This is why I use Gigabyte 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.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my 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.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
1. What feature did you NEED, when you flashed the firmware.
The one that stops Ukranian hackers from using a backdoor to access his router, Internet connection, and his personal network.
2. Why didn't you buy hardware that had that feature to begin with.
You will find that the vast majority of routers are sold with damned little information. Look at the boxes and web sites and tell me which routers let you forward a range of ports rather than individual ports. Tell me which ones have hard-coded IP addresses for time servers, which ones have a drop-down list of time servers, and which ones let you enter the IP address freely. Tell me which ones let you limit wireless access by MAC address while letting you have open access on hardwired Ethernet. Tell me which ones have a problem with the web-based admin that causes it to not work properly with Mozilla. Gee, maybe it's not so easy after all.
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.
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.
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
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.
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 worked. Problem was, not even a lot of the tech support folks new about it.
Now, the trend is towards having 2 ROM images. Flash goes to new image, if new image can't boot, old image boots.
The point is, this problem is 1) well known, and 2) solutions are well known.
We have a tendancy to excuse these sorts of things, but the moral to the story is to NEVER blame problems that stem from bad design on the end user.