cisco 7970 recovery = possible?
Submitted by bx16v on Sun, 07/01/2007 - 9:01am.
Hi,
A while ago I bricked my spare 7970.
i was wondering if it was possible to recover it at all?
It's sitting at a grey screen with 'upgrading' at the top, the mac address in the middle and the cisco logo at the bottom of the screen. I'd really like to get it up if possible - is it possible to recover from this ?
Ta
 
Not wishing to insult your
Sun, 07/01/2007 - 9:18am
Not wishing to insult your intelligence (I am sure you have tried this already) but a factory reset has always recovered mine.
Hold # when powering up, when orange lights flash 3491672850*#
It should pick up a fresh image from TFTP then
 
Ta - didn't know about that
Sun, 07/01/2007 - 10:05am
Ta - didn't know about that one!
Now all I have after the headphone light etc light up, I get one of the line buttons flashing orange and the display never lights.
It doesnt seem to be looking for DHCP either?
 
The line buttons flash one
Sun, 07/01/2007 - 10:13am
The line buttons flash one by one over and over right? Occasionally it'll reset too (will hang at one of the lights and start over again).
Because you erased all your settings by doing this your phone has no idea where your TFTP server is anymore. You need to set up an option on your DHCP server that points to the IP of your TFTP server. You can try option 66 or option 150.
A good Windows XP program that you can use to make your own DHCP server, if you can't do options on your router (ie: if you have like a little WRT54G from Walmart) is tftpd32. Has a DHCP server and TFTP server and client built in to make stuff like this easy.
 
The line buttons aren't
Sun, 07/01/2007 - 10:19am
The line buttons aren't flashing over and over - the first one comes on, then goes off, and then there is no more activity.
The port on my 3560 switch remains up, and I dont see any requests for DHCP come to dhcp turbo. I take it I've shafted it!
I can still do the reset as described above, but at the end of that procedure, it just seems to turn itself off as well, but the port remains up on the switch.
 
It shouldn't do.
Press and
Sun, 07/01/2007 - 10:26am
It shouldn't do.
Press and hold down # whilst powering it up. Keep it held down - for about 5 to 10 seconds - and the lights on the right will strobe orange.
Quickly enter that sequence whilst it is strobing and they will strobe red after a few seconds. Leave it well alone and it will re-provision itself.
 
Gave up after a few hours -
Sun, 07/01/2007 - 3:50pm
Gave up after a few hours - I doubt she's dead Jim :(
Once I do a factory reset I get the lights changing to red as descibed above, then the phone powers off, and every few minutes resets itself and doesnt send dhcp requests to my server
 
It's a brick. That's what
Sun, 07/01/2007 - 4:23pm
It's a brick. That's what 7970s do when they brick.
 
It's a brick. That's what
Sun, 07/01/2007 - 4:23pm
It's a brick. That's what 7970s do when they brick. If you see a bullseye on the bottom left hand corner, it's a brick.
 
Can you let me know if your
Sat, 07/21/2007 - 3:50am
Can you let me know if your still having the same problem with your 7970? I had exactly the same thing and managed to sort it so let me know.
 
(No subject)
Sun, 03/16/2008 - 4:09pm
 
Exactly same problem that
Mon, 11/17/2008 - 11:16pm
Exactly same problem that everybody else. I think that the 349... sequence finish killing the phone.
Totally dead at this time.
Any clue about this crap?
 
7970s and Bricking
Tue, 11/18/2008 - 3:09am
Hi,
Most if not all can be recovered if you have the time to follow a few steps. Alot of people assume they are dead when in fact they are waiting on the correct environment to upgrade the firmware from.
The most common issue is when the screen goes blank and they see a line light (or not) then they assume it has given up. In fact the screen is dark - which looks dead - now if you have a phone in this state get a good torch and shine it into the screen - you'll see it is still doing something.
Now I have found that with bricked 7970s (and 71's) that under Windows with tftpd32 or Asterisk and all the right files nothing works properly and they sit there looking like a scrapper. However plugging said phone into a CCME box with the firmware loads for that phone model fixes them.
Now is this a Cisco to Cisco feature I am not sure but I have recovered a couple of "very" dead 7970s that were in limbo by plugging onto my CCME and they were upgraded and then visible to CCME.
Putting them back to the Asterisk machine they registered and worked. So if you can find someone with a CCME that has 7970 support (which most do) take the phone and PSU plug in and have a look/see. You might be surprised.
Also the torch trick was shown to me by someone much wiser than me who was commenting on why so many people condemn the 7970 as a brick in this situation. We paid $50 for one from eBay that was marked 'bricked after firmware upgrade', I have been using it now for about a year with no issues - shining the light onto the display showed it was again in limbo waiting for whatever they wait for.
In fact a cheap 1760 with CCME installed should do the trick and a useful workshop tool :-) I find they upgrade Cisco's much better than third party methods.
Regards,
Steve
 
Firmware files
Sat, 01/10/2009 - 3:10pm
Hi Steve,
Your comments explain alot. do the firmware loads need to be the origional files, or can I use the most recent SIP firmware.
Cheers
David
 
Firmware
Mon, 02/16/2009 - 7:11am
Hi David,
No, you can load any valid firmware for the phone model. People have varying luck with different versions. But try an load an 8 at least version if you're starting.
Regards,
Steve
 
Hmm, interesting Steve! It
Thu, 03/12/2009 - 4:21pm
Hmm, interesting Steve!
It is indeed doing something when you look with a torch! (my 7965).
But.. that program you gave for DHCP/TFTP... The phone gets connected to the DHCP. But doesn't make an attempt to retrieve files from the TFTP folder..
 
Same Raw Deal !
Tue, 03/31/2009 - 7:15am
I've got a 7965. Tried the 349 sequence and am experiencing the same 'dead' looking symptoms. Running CME 7.0 on a 2811 with all the right firmeware being served up by the TFTP server (the router). In fact, I did a debug tftp events on the 2811 when the phone was first out of the box. I watched the phone and the debug info as the phone successfully downloaded the files it wanted. After that, the phone resets to the screen with a check in a checkbox to the lower left then resets again to the upgrading screen which errors out and resets the phone to the screen with the bullseye to the bottom left. Now I've god a seemingly bricked 7965. What's up?
 
try this strangeroad:
Tue, 03/31/2009 - 4:20pm
I had a similar situation a month or so ago when i was converting phones from sccp to sip. First be sure that you are actually reaching your tftp server. I realised that at one stage, i wasnt connecting with the server even though i was getting a dhcp address. Once i changed to a different machine, everything seemingly worked fine - well almost. I was provisioning about 15 phones and the first one was fussy and non cooperative. I also thought it was bricked. Since i had messed it up on the first machine without proper tftp settings, I put it aside, loaded the other ones and came back to that one. It did come again to a bull-seye which sat there for a bit and then finally after leaving the bulls eye for a while it eventually reloaded and registered just fine. It seems to me it was about 5 minutes for it to get over itself..... Hope not to offend anyone, but as great as the cisco phones are, the firmware must have been designed by a chick cause they all got some serious attitude built in. Once you learn to speak their language "so to speak", they warm up to you substantially and are very nice looking phones.
 
Thanks SteveW!!!
Sat, 02/06/2010 - 9:00am
Thank you Steve, thank you all for this post! I've had the same problem and solved it! yessss! :))
I have 7970 and did factory reset, which afterwards did not installed new firmware from Communication Manager 6.1 nor boot properly! I got the bulls eye! And after couple of restarts (123456789*0#) the phone was stuck at the black (blank) screen ! :(
After reading for two days on the internet how to solve this issue, I read this post and with the help of Communication Manager Express router i successfully brought the phone from plain brick! :))) Yess!
On short: Installed CME 4.1 and firmware SCCP files for 7970. Connected one Fast Ethernet port with the phone through cross-over cable (could have done it with straight-through also) and voila, the phone got the firmware and booted successfully !
Thank you once again!
Cheers,
Tiberie
 
A minor addition to all the
Wed, 02/17/2010 - 1:06pm
A minor addition to all the great stuff that has already been posted on this topic...
A bricked phone can also easily be brought back to life without any cisco equipment.
A windows machine running TFTP and DHCP (option 66 or option 150 required to point the phone to the TFTP server), connected to a hub/switch and the phone connected to that same switch, will also do the job. A free to use program that does the trick is TFTPD32 (Google it...).
It has been mentioned pretty often probably, but 99.9% of the phones that seem dead, are not realy dead, they just need a fresh firmware and you just need to help the phone to find it ;)
 
Phones are not Bricked and only need tftpd
Wed, 03/31/2010 - 2:44pm
I agree with evilb, I had 2 7970's that looked bricked I tried using the TFTP / DHCP server that came with trixbox however all I could see was the phone asking for term70.default.loads over and over. As a last resort I switched off my trixbox server and just used my windows PC with TFTP. Performed the hardware reset 3491672850*# and both phones sprang back into life.
I suffered with the bullseye in the left corner and the black screen and I had one of the phones do the 1st line flash amber trick mentioned above.
Follow the TFTPd route and you'll recover your phones.
Note: I could only get this to work using the contents of a cmterm 7970 .cop file using a cmterm 7970.zip would not work just got stuck on loading the term70.default.loads file which may explain the problem I had with the trixbox TFTP/DHCP.
 
'Bricked' phones
Wed, 05/12/2010 - 12:49am
Hi all,
Firstly, thank you all for this great information. I was about to throw away my 7970 until I saw this thread and the posts containing a wealth of information.
As mentioned by timmsi1, the tftpd32 solution worked for me but I had the same problem with term.default.loads file being requested over and over again. I then found a .cop file and the voila, it all worked like magic.
I did have the issue of opening .cop archive and found that 'tar -xf' on a unix/linux system opened the archive without any issues. Then copied the files across to a windows system running tftpd32 (had to set option 66 - address of the tftp server).
So, don't throw away your 7970 without trying this :-)
***** Update *****
I managed to resolve the issue of .zip files. Earlier I moved the .zip files from another machine via email and it appears the virus scanning program must have altered the checksum of the files contained in it - hence the repeated load of term70.default.loads file. When I did a direct download and unarchived the files it did not matter whether I used .zip or .cop files.
 
blank screen and rebooting.
Tue, 05/04/2010 - 10:34am
Thank you for the great info. This thread is golden. Our office has about 12 7961 cisco phones that work. I have a few that are being difficult.
One of the phone, was connecting to dhcp, then showing the upgrading, then rebooting. I did the 3491672850#* and now it shows a blank screen, reboots, blank screen, reboots, etc. It is getting a IP address from DHCP still (hopefully a good sign). Been going on for over 30 minutes. I shined a flashlight on the screen and don't see anything.
Any ideas on how to to proceed?
 
7961
Wed, 05/12/2010 - 12:58am
I have not used 7961s (I have 7960s and 7970) hence cannot give you a definitive answer. But from my frustrating experience with the 7970s, I would suggest that you make very sure that your config file is correct - both the values and syntax. With my 7970 which uses a xml config file, I saw the phone trying to reload repeatedly and only when I had all the config parameters right and syntax right was I able to get the phone to reload correctly. However, if you are using the same config files as the ones you used for the working phones then obviously you would need to look elsewhere. Hope this helps.
 
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