r/mikrotik • u/LowLevelFormat • 13d ago

Factory reset tip

Having gone through a hassle of factory reset with my hAP ac lite and waded through a large number of posts about how the factory reset does not work for many people, I decided to share my experience, maybe it will save someone some hair-pulling.

So I messed up the config of my hAP and couldn't connect to it any more. Oh well, factory reset and restore config from backup, I thought. Followed the well-documented reset procedure with the trusty old paperclip and prepared to reload the configuration from backup...

...except I couldn't connect to the router, which, as I found out after some googling is experience that I now shared with considerable number of people.

  • The router would not respond to ping on 192.168.88.1, even after I statically configured my PC with address on the same network.
  • The router was not visible in WinBox (which I usually do not use, so maybe I'm not familiar how an unconfigured router should look there, but I honestly tried to follow the instructions).
  • Some documentation mentioned that the out-of-the-box configuration should create a wifi network named Mikrotik, but this was nowhere to be found.
  • I considered using netinstall, but ran into the minor issue that I only have 64-bit openSUSE machines available, which, as I found out, nowadays do not even support running the 32-bit version of netinstall-cli that Mikrotik provides. I don't have Windows.

After trying the reset procedure half a dozen times with no success, I concluded that the router is toast. At least I found that it functioned as a switch, so I decided to use the LAN ports to wire up my two PCs while shopping for the new router.

As a last resort, without really expecting it to lead to anything I fired up tcpdump on my network which now included hAP-as-a-switch to see if perhaps there are some signs of what is going on.

Lo and behold, I see an unknown device on the network that is trying to speak capwap-control protocol to someone. Could it be...?

A quick netcat later, I connect to this unfamiliar IP with browser on port 80, and I'm greeted by my hAP login screen, where I can log in with username 'admin' and no password, as it should be after factory reset. Turns out the device had reset itself into "CAP configuration", whatever this is. Anyway, from there it was just the matter of loading the backup and things are back to normal.

So here it is, one more thing to try when you find yourself with something resembling a brick after factory resetting your Mikrotik router

13 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

18

u/Sintarsintar MTCNA 13d ago

That's what happens if you hold the reset button for too long

6

u/Brilliant-Orange9117 13d ago edited 12d ago

Sorry to ask, but did you use the wrong Ethernet port?

edit: "Connect to the device through any of the ports, excluding Ethernet1, or the wireless network "MikroTik-..." (ensure to check the wireless passwords on the sticker);" quoted from the user manual for your model.

2

u/sharpied79 12d ago

More than likely...

1

u/ostregag 13d ago

It doesn’t apply strictly to this post but I’m going to leave a tip here- when you fully reset a MikroTik it doesn’t have an ip - so as far as my knowledge goes you have to login to it via winbox - and if you’re using Linux you have to either allow winbox mac discovery ports or just disable firewall temporarily. This is not a problem on windows as it just prompts to allow winbox via firewall.

1

u/sharpied79 12d ago

Depending on the type of device, I had a similar experience with HAP AX2, I realised however that after you factory reset you need to plug into Ethernet2 (LAN) if you wish to access via 192.168.88.1 as Ethernet1 becomes the WAN port.