Tp-Link TD-W8968 firmware update even if it says upload fail as its illegal image
I myself messed up my Tp-Link TD-W8968 which i bought in 2018-2019 it was ver.4 hardware ADSL router with usb. I tried openwrt for testing out of curiosity just for knowledge. But when tried to rollback to OEM stock firmware. The error was Image uploading failed. The selected file contains an illegal image.
I googled and found this topic https://forum.openwrt.org/t/solved-need-your-help-to-revert-tp-link-td-w8968-v3-firmware/31942 - in brief what this link has is, the similar issue was solved by stripping bytes from .bin firmware and that worked as upgrade firmware, but the file was of ver.3 firmware and it was too old like 2015 something. I checked Official TP-Link site for TD-W8968, there latest one was ver.5 and i wanted that as firmware on my device. So i looked up for how to strip those bytes from .bin file of firmware and found this link https://forum.openwrt.org/t/stripping-firmware-how-much-to-remove/33670/6
Just for record i though if i succeed will post v5 file for some unknown person who will hunt on google for this.
This user SteadyDave on last link posted a very good indepth that how to strip the .bin file of firmware. I followed and successfully can upgrade firmware to latest v5.
I wanted to save copy of his explained steps here so that even if in futuree by some reason its gone it should be here as backup.
So i uploaded file you can download here
Stripped - TD-W8968v5_eu_2_0_0_170331R31789_2017-03-31_10.32.19
I was messing around trying to get a version of OpenWRT on this as yet unsupported router. Maybe not the place to post this, but I will be infinitely helpful for anyone searching for a solution to this problem, so here it is: If your TL-WR841N v14 is in a boot loop after a botched firmware install, this is how to fix it:
Download the firmware file for your router from tp-link website. At this time, you can change the language of the firmware if you want, for example, my router is the TW version, with traditional Chinese interface. I downloaded the US version of the FW, now the interface is in English.
Rename the fw file you just downloaded to 'tp_recovery.bin'.
Use your hex editor to delete the first 200 blocks of the file 'tp_recovery.bin'.
I used XVI32. From the menu; edit>blocks n chars>hexadecimal>$200>ok... edit>block delete... file>save.Set the wired IP address of your computer to 192.168.0.66 - this is the address that the router is looking for a TFTP server on. I found this address with wireshark (I also found that the router was looking for a file called 'tp_recovery.bin' with wireshark).
Use your TFTP program of choice, set it up to be on 192.168.0.66, and put the 'tp_recovery.bin' file where it needs to be.
Connect a LAN port of the router to your computer's Ethernet port.
hold the 'reset' button on the router and apply power, hold the button down for around 8 seconds. This puts the router into TFTP mode, where it will look for the recovery file on TFTP sever 192.168.0.66. The file should send over TFTP from your pc and your router should now reboot and be back to working.
If you want to see what's going on during the recovery process, you can hook up to the routers serial port. This isn't required, but I just like to see what's going on during the process.
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