[Solved] Netinstall failure

RouterOS General
1

I recently bricked my 2011 while trying to remove a partition.
(Fortunately, I have a spare 951 taking over until I can recover the 2011)

I configured netinstall on my laptop (Windows7 64bit) to run as Administrator and with the WinXP-sp3 compatibility mode, and it is able to PXE boot the 2011.
However, whenever I select the router and firmware (6.36.2-mipsbe) and click Install, the status shows “making offer” and then “installing” but it just hangs for a while and then goes back to the same state as if I had not attempted an install. There is no error message.

On the 2011’s console, the unit reaches the “Waiting on install server” state, and never does anything afterwards.

I’ve tried:
repartitioning back to just one partition
formatting the NAND (I saved my license key to a text file first)

It still will not proceed beyond the “waiting on install server” phase.
I also tried placing a dumb switch between my laptop and the 2011 with no results.

I haven’t found any other netinstall threads with this exact mode of failure.
Does anyone out there have any further suggestions?

2

A. Firewall off ?
B. Antivirus or Internet Secure suite off as it could take over internal firewall ?
C. Network should be set to to Home instead of Public.
D. Switch off all not needed interfaces.

3

And sometimes it is necessary to try some old netinstalls. I have seen that many new didn’t work while some 6.18 or so did under the exactly same conditions…

4

A: Yep.
B: This could be it - we use enterprise based antivirus from Symantec… I’ll try that
C: I chose “work” network. (more or less the same as home - since the laptop is on a domain, I decided to choose this one
D: did that.

I’m going to feel silly if it’s the antivirus thing…

Do you mean an older version of the netinstall tool, or do you mean use netinstall to flash the router with an older ROS version?

5

I meant older tool version. But it’s long time ago I did it last time. Just remembered…

6

Loudly thinking …
…Home network is considered “for all known safe for me devices at LAN” so maybe there are internal rules for other LAN types which prevents something ? …
…Isn’t domain putting a crimp for local LAN settings … do I inherit some policies from domain ? …

7

Jarda’s suggestion got me going.

Netinstall version is v6.36.2
ROS v6.36.2 was the version that was failing.
ROS v6.35.4 worked. (using the same Netinstall)

I did not need to disable antivirus or change from Work → Home mode.
I suspect that had these been behind the problem, the symptom would have been that the netboot phase would fail and/or the router would never appear in Netinstall’s list of routers to be flashed. Thanks for the assist, guys.

I’m going to link this thread as a bug report over in the current release thread.

8

Update:

Well, since I saw v6.36.3 just came out (literally posted to Mikrotik’s site AFTER I downloaded the latest bugfix version to test Jarda’s theory but before I came here to post the results!)
So, I tested the hot-off-the-presses version and it worked just fine too.
So I re-tested the v6.36.2 version and that worked as well. (???)

The ONLY thing that changed between my failed attempts and the working attempt was that I actually enabled my WiFi connection profile so that I could go download the bugfix version.
(I forgot to re-disable it)

I had no default GW set in the LAN connection profile so that my PC would just use the ethernet interface to talk to the router, but use the WiFi to actually go on the Internet.
Yes, I’d also previously tried setting an actual default GW address on the Ethernet interface even though it was only connected to the dead router.

I dunno - it seems that Windows newer than XP and multi-ethernet-interface PCs have both gotten squirrelly with Mikrotik’s tools that try to interact with raw ethernet frames…
(Winbox discovery and Netinstall have both given me fits on such machines)

One feature I wish that netinstall and Winbox discovery allowed: Select the interface you want it to operate on
(“discover on Local Area Connection 2”, for instance)

9

Well,
seems it is stil unclear what is the fully correct procedure. My procedure is:

  1. disable wifi and other ethernets, if any.
  2. direct connect ethernet to device, manually set the IP parameters.
  3. disable firewall, antivirus.
  4. try the newest netinstall and if fail, then go through my archive to try all netinstalls I find. It works somehow finally. Hopefully.

Sometimes it is problem to get the device into pxe boot mode correctly, so serial link might be necessary.

It is always big art to bring a device to life again.

Congratulations that you succeeded.

10

I have 3 computers running RouterOS x86.
My 3 computers are all failure with latest netinstall.
And show this error message “nbp is too big to fit in free base memory.”

But it run well with old version netinstall (v6.44).
I have to use this old version netinstall to boot.

Dont know why