GS1200-8 Firmware Update Failed

mburnicki

Hi,
about one year ago I bought a GS1200-8 (S/N S224318003998). Since I was quite satisfied with it, I just bought 2 more GS1200-8 switches that have a newer firmware.

On the firmware download page at
https://community.zyxel.com/en/discussion/20343/switch-gs1200-8-series-v2-00-patch-3-firmware-release

I saw that the firmware with the current version "Zyxel GS1200-8 - V2.00(ABME.3)C0" and thought I'd upgrade my older switch because the release notes mention "Enhance web access security.", among other changes.

So I downloaded and installed the .zip file, and tried to upload the included binary file 200ABME3C0.bin. I had to wait 40 seconds, but then only got a message "Firmware upgrade was failed. Please try again."

I tried again and got the same results.
I also tried to install the older firmware (ABME.2) which was running before, but that failed, too.
I also tried to restore the default settings by pressing the reset button for some seconds and afterwards tried to upload either of the the firmware files, but that failed, too.

After the reset to factory defaults I can access the switch under its default IP address (192.168.1.3), but only get to the firmware upgrade page repeating the message "Firmware upgrade was failed. Please try again.".

Except this, the switch basically seems to work, i.e. forward network traffic, but I'm unable to do some configuration etc.

Is there a way to recover from this state?

Thanks,
Martin

Zyxel_Nami

Hello Martin @mburnicki

Which browser did you use for the firmware upgrade? Were you using a VPN at the time?

I suggest connecting your PC directly to the GS1200-8 switch and trying the upgrade again. The error may result from an interrupted upload, possibly caused by network issues like VPN or being on a different subnet. This can prevent the switch from completing the upload within the 30-second timeout.

mburnicki

Hello Nami,

I was using a current Firefox browser on Linux. I remember I already upgraded the firmware of the switch right after I had bought it. The image file was still in my download directory.
I don't remember exactly how I had done the upgrade. Maybe I temporarily changed the IP address of the PC's network interface from DHCP to a static IP matching the requirement of the switch.

This time I didn't change the IP address of my PC's built-in NIC, but temporarily added another interface, a 1 GB USB-to-LAN interface and configured that one with static IP address 192.168.1.1. I could access the web interface of the switch via that connection, and when I tried the firmware update, I saw the LED at the switch was flickering green during the data transfer, but it finally failed. I couldn't imagine that there could be a timeout via the 1 GBit link.

Now I tried from an old Windows laptop with a built-in NIC which I assigned a static IP address, and it worked and finished successfully. Great that the switch supports to repeat the firmware upgrade procedure even though an earlier try failed.

Anyway, all is good now. Thanks for your hints!

Martin