I would like to thank the OP
whoslooking!! I did something stupid, I usually do. I learn the hard way. I have over 15 years in IT. My mistake? Amazon Prime customer, need a cam, buy one with what looks like a lot of positive review, hooked it up quickly and told myself to get back to it later to tweak it. So a year later, without thinking if I had a Chinese or US version, you guessed it, I applied the wrong firmware and killed it. I spent hours reading around here and would like to thank everyone else as well.
So my camera showed the 5.3.0_150513 label on the back of it. After spending some time around here but being overwhelmed with all that info, I started to understand the concept of having a Chinese cam and trying to apply a US firmware is a problem. That's what the hiktools utility helps with. Cool. So I got familiar with that. I also used the Downgrader posted here. And not enough patience will hurt you. Not knowing what to expect next will hurt you. Not thinking outside the box and prepare yourself to get feedback for the steps you are taking will hurt you.
I had dead firmware on some HP storage devices costing $20K and up. I also killed firmware on android devices. So I am familiar with methods posted online to revive a dead device by multiple generous people like whoslooking. Many times I was ready to just give up but I'm stubborn, lucky me. LOL (not that great for my Wife sometimes....). So be patient and do not just press buttons unless instructions clearly state so.
Here is what I did and I think I should share with everyone. As a network guy, I check for pulse, meaning I ping, ping and ping so more. Do that. I opened multiple cmd windows with pinging continuously those critical IP addresses. Having more than one computer to do all of this help. I had my laptop on my 192.168.1.x LAN, typical. And I had my desktop set as 192.0.0.128. Subnet set to 255.255.255.0. Nothing else. Then on my desktop (the one with IP 192.0.0.128) open a cmd window and ping 192.0.0.64 continuously (ping 192.0.0.64 -t). It is a heart monitor from now on for your cam you will try to revive. On my laptop which is on my default LAN of 192.168.1.x, I started to ping continuously the 192.168.1.64. Why? Because in some cases the cam might come back or be reset with that IP. It could also be a sign that even if the firmware seemed to have been applied properly (getting a successful
TFTP transfer yet not working) AND you will get replies to the 192.168.1.64 address, you will notice that it might not show up in the SADP Tool and it might not open under your browser of your choice (that happened to me SO many times).
Many times I would have the TFTP utility running listening under the 192.0.0.128 interface of my desktop waiting for the cam to boot up and try to fetch a possible firmware update from 192.0.0.128. That's why the cam uses the 192.0.0.64 IP for the first 3-5 seconds it starts the boot process. If the TFTP server doesn't run, then it tries to load the installed firmware (considering it the "OS" of the cam). If the "OS" is dead then it will lock up and go into recovery mode. Bottom line you need to go to square one and try again.
In my successful attempts, I saw this:
. TFTP server running under the 192.0.0.128 with digicap.dav file ready to be served through tftp protocol to 192.0.0.64 (the cam).
2. Power up cam then watched the TFTP status window for activity AND watched the continuous ping on my desktop as well to 192.0.0.64.
3. I can see the camera started to respond to pings at 192.0.0.64 and the TFTP server starting to serve (transmit) the firmware file (digicap.dav). If you read around here you will find out what it should say.
4. Now here is the thing, once it says it completed the transfer to the cam, the continuous ping to 192.0.0.64 should be steady and not stop until you get the TFTP message that says "Device [192.0.0.64] system update completed!". If the ping stops before you ever get the "Device [192.0.0.64] system update completed!" message then back to square one. Period. (wrong firmware, corrupt firmware, bad network cable, bad attempt, missed something, wrong region that might need to be addressed with hiktools, etc). NOW, if you get the successful message of "Device [192.0.0.64] system update completed!", things can be different based on what I read around here. See next step.
5. I got the "Device [192.0.0.64] system update completed!" message multiple times. Even with wrong firmwares. And after that the cam stays on. What I noticed is that the cam tends to start responding to the 192.168.1.64 pings and from what I experienced, it's NO good. I can't see it in SADP Tool unless it's in recovery mode (useless for me) or the it is inaccessible via browser.
6. Close the TFTP utility so you don't apply the firmware twice as you will reboot cam in next step.
7. So I had to turn off power to the cam then turn it back on. Consistently. The cam NEVER rebooted on its own, ever. And trust me I flashed this thing SO many times trying to revive it. So you might run into this issue. Either way the continuous ping to 192.0.0.64 will eventually stops. I ended up waiting even though I couldn't tell for how long, just in case there was still things happening "behind my back".
8. Now when you manually reboot it, just watch your two pinging windows. YUou should at least see a little bit (2) of the replies from 192.0.0.64, looking for a TFTP server then it should move on. In my case, it stopped one ping once (timeout) then it showed 192.0.0.64. I was freaking out since the TFTP server was not running. I didn't know what was going on. I looked at the pings coming one after another from 192.0.0.64. I was also looking at the front of the camera and noticed the IR LEDs turned off. I started to get excited.
9. I looked over to my SADP Tool and sure enough, the 192.0.0.64 device showed up with the 5.2.5 firmware!!!! I changed the settings to freflect my home LAN with an IP in the 192.168.1.x subnet. Used the 12345 default password. It should immediately tell you it successfully got applied.
10. Open your browser and point to that new IP you assigned. And sure enough, I got to access my super dead now alive cam. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!
I had one extra issue: it was all in Chinese. Lucky for me I had another Hikvision cam with fairly close version of firmware so without knowing chinese I managed to get to some of the configuration fairly easy. So what's next? Wll I used whoslooking MTD hack. I read the thread but more importantly watched the video. Again, I guess maybe because of my background I could easily understand why the steps were taken and how to proceed. That doesn't mean I understand deeply what's going on behind the scenes. But monkey see monkey do and after messing around with the right path syntax (there is a backslash I overlooked in the video to the share folder), I was back in business on first try.
WHATEVER you do: patience, triple check, read, watch, and repeat. You will succeed.
Sorry for the very long post. Hope it is therapeutic.
and I dont know why in cloud ezviz cam is offline
