SOLVED: Reflashing your Buffalo WHR-HP-G300N to the stock firmware
This problem is discussed at great length on many forums, but almost every solution proposed does not work as described. Let me explain…
The Buffalo WHR-HP-G300N as shipped from Buffalo Wireless comes shipped with a Buffalo-specific, modified version of the Open Source dd-wrt project. Their version of the firmware has some advanced features not available in the public community version of dd-wrt.
The Buffalo dd-wrt firmware image is also encrypted, so you can’t directly flash it to the WHR if you’ve already flashed your Buffalo router with the community version of dd-wrt or OpenWRT. You can’t even use the stock Buffalo CD installer to “reset” the router back to the stock firmware. That doesn’t work.
Once you flash off the Buffalo-supplied firmware, you’re stuck without it.
Until now…
If you have Linux, you need to do the following, to ensure you can re-flash back to the Buffalo firmware. There maybe a Windows analogue, but Linux has the power and tools to let me do things that Windows can’t, so I use that instead.
1. Install the tftp package for your distribution
$ sudo apt-get install tftp
2. Unplug the power cable from the Buffalo router and plug the network cable into your laptop/PC, leaving it only connected via the NIC
3. Download the latest Buffalo firmware for your WHR from their website’s downloads area and stash it in a user-accessible directory. I put mine in /tmp for ease of access.
4. Open three shell windows and run the following in each window:
– First shell:
while /bin/true; do arp -s 192.168.11.1 [MAC of WHR router, found on the sticker on the back]; done;
– Second shell:
$ tftp tftp> binary tftp> rexmt 1 tftp> timeout 60 tftp> connect 192.168.11.1 tftp> put [firmware filename]
Don’t hit Enter yet on that last line, just queue it up. You’ll hit Enter on that in a moment.
– Third shell:
ping 192.168.11.1
5. Now hit Enter in the tftp window at the same time as you plug in power into the router. If you can’t do them at the same time, hit Enter in the tftp shell first, then plug in power a moment later.
If successful, you should see something like this:
tftp> put shrhpg300n-pro-v24sp2-14998 Sent 3670268 bytes in 17.7 seconds
The router will then flash the red ‘diag’ light for about 5 minutes, and then the router will come up. The shell you have open with the ‘ping’ command running will reflect the router as being back up.
Note: Make sure you’re using the Professional firmware, not the “User Friendly” firmware!
The “User Friendly” firmware is not based on dd-wrt, and feels like something stuck in the 1980’s, or something that a high-school intern worked on during his lunch break. It’s horrible, avoid it.
Now go to a browser and put http://192.168.11.1 into the URI field, and you will be prompted to reset the router username/password.
Once you reset this, you’re all set, and you can configure the rest of your router settings as needed.
[ Reference Links ]
- Buffalo Wireless Forums
- dd-wrt Buffalo Firmware
- dd-wrt Buffalo Discussion Forums
- dd-wrt WHR-HP-G300N specific information
annafil said on November 2nd, 2010 at 4:29 am quote
Woo, thanks for the instructions, been looking for this since I first flashed stock dd-wrt.
Can’t wait to try :)
hbinh said on November 6th, 2010 at 7:39 pm quote
my computer is running windows xp, so could i use backtrack cd to boot and sovle the problem as you instructed?
bkuerbis said on November 7th, 2010 at 9:20 am quote
Thanks for this clear explanation. I got the “flash ROM error” after attempting to flash Auto AP to my router, and this process worked perfectly to restore the original firmware. Speaking of which, have you seen anyone have success putting Auto AP on the WHR-HP-G300N?
Roy said on December 27th, 2010 at 1:17 am quote
I like the description “a high-school intern worked on during his lunch break.” Yup, I guess that’s really the work of a high-school intern lol.
John said on September 17th, 2011 at 12:30 pm quote
any chance we can do this using windows7 ?
jose said on February 15th, 2012 at 12:18 pm quote
I keep getting no such file or directory after i type put file name?
cbranca said on November 21st, 2013 at 7:42 pm quote
this is the now url http://www.buffalotech.com/support-and-downloads/download/whrhpg300n-pro-v24sp2-19154-download.zip