7961 blank screen after factory hard reset, but now won't upgrade - I've done this successfully before....but not this time

[Jonathan Raper]

Thanks for taking the time to look at this. For those of you familiar with this process, I did this EXACT same procedure on a 7941G about 4 hours ago with success. From hard reset with blank screen, I was able to get it to load 7.0(2). From there, I upgraded to 8.5(2), followed by 8.5(2)SR1. From there, my call manager took over and upgraded the phone all the way to the latest rev that we had on the call manager....so this process should be the same, no?

I have a 7961 that was not wanting to boot properly, and I couldn't get to the settings, so I don't know what firmware rev it was running before.....

So I did the hard reset: 3491672850*# - got the blank screen on boot which was expected, followed by the line LEDs flashing green in sequence. It gets performs a TFTP request, and asks for term61.default.loads, gets an IP address, and that's it. The line lights continue to flash green in sequence until the phone appears to reboot with a quick flash of the microphone and speaker buttons, and then the headset button goes green and the line buttons continue flashing green in sequence....

If I hold down the # button while plgging it in, the speaker button will remain green for a bit, then the line buttons will flash in sequence amber, until I enter the reset string 123456789*0#, which makes the line buttons flash green in sequence, and the process continues from there as before.

If I enter the hard reset string of 3491672850*#, the line buttons go from amber to red and flash in sequence for a bit, then the switch to green and sequence for a bit.

I have tried every firmware version from 7.0(2) (the oldest I can find on Cisco.com for a 7961G) all the way up to 8.5(4)

I watch the tftps client (tftpd64) and my ping stats - I see the tftp request as soon as I see ping responses, and that's it. It downloads the one term61.default.loads file, and then that's it. no other downloads. Then after just over a minute, the ping requests time out, and the cycle starts over. So, I unplug it and move on to the next version hoping that I would find one that works.

Is my phone bricked, or is there something else I am missing? Is it possible that there is an older term61.default.loads that the phone is looking for that is no longer on Cisco.com?

Thanks,

Jonathan

[Leo Laohoo]

So I did the hard reset: 3491672850*# -

If you use this process, it normally takes 5 to 10 minutes.

[Jonathan Raper]

Thanks Leo. I've tried more than once and just let it sit there....as I mentioned, it just cycles through the process and does the same thing over and over again.

[paolo bevilacqua]

If phone doesn't follow with files after term61.default.loads, that means something is incompatible with the loader.

Try 8.5.2 again. Make sure all the files are correctly copied to tftpd32.

[Jonathan Raper]

Thanks Paolo. I will try 8.5.2 again, but I'm pretty sure this was one of the ones I let sit and cycle through. I won't be able to touch it again until tomorrow, though.

[Jonathan Raper]

I do have an update that you may find of interest....

I found another phone that is the same, and it is running an OLDER rev of code:

App Load ID		Jar41.2-9-0-117dev.sbn
Boot Load ID		7961G_64-02070433Amd64megDEV.bin
Version		7.0(0.151DEV)

Any ideas where I can get this 7.0(0.151DEV) version? That might be the trick to getting it bootable again.

Thanks!

Jonathan