DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

panos · 2007-04-11 10:58:29

A bad product became even worse:

Decided to upgrade from 1.02 -> 1.03. Took a backup from the DNS-323 to an other NAS device (thank God I did).
Upgrade was successfull. I even got an (ironic as I found out later) e-mail alert:
"Hello Administrator, firmware update , version=1.03(1.03.0330.2007). Sincerely,Your DNS-323".

Decided to reset the unit to factory defaults (from the web administration) and reformat the 2 Seagate 500GB drives.
So,
1) I reset the unit to factory defaults
2) I setup the unit from scratch (IP, unit name, time, etc etc)
3) Re-create the Raid 0 (stripping) and format the disks
4) Reboot the unit (all was working fine)
5) Unit was still working fine and while I was looking at all the settings one by one to make sure I didn't miss something, the unit's name had
mysteriously changed to a cryptic 3 character name (the name I had set was "DNS323"). I tried to change it to "DNS323" and save it but it
turned again to the cryptic 3 character name. I tried to change it to anything valid (A-Z char set) but it always reverted to the damn invalid
characters.
6) Only solution seemed to reset back to defaults and try from scratch. Did so...
7) RIP DNS-323. It's not working anymore! Upon switching it on, the D-LINK led flashes non-stop. It gets an IP from my DHCP server (I can ping
it) but can't manage it in Internet Explorer (the page cannot be displayed). Telnet doesn't work either (I don't know if telnet should work
anyhow). But here's the worst part: press reset on the back small button for any time interval (10-30 seconds) and NOTHING happens; the
unit doesn't do anything. Furthermore, the D-Link Easy Search Utility v3.5.0.0 (of course) fails to locate the device.

EDIT: after some testing it all comes down to this:
1) When switched on, the unit gets an IP (from DHCP)
2) it responds to pings on its IP and pings to its name (it has somehow reverted to the factory default "DNS-323" name (I have no clue how
it reverted since pressing the reset button on the back of the unit has no effect)
3) the "D-Link" front button flashes non-stop
4) the unit is not possible to manage in any way
5) the unit is non-functional (no web interface as described above) regardless of the presence of disk(s) or no disks at all.
(letting the unit alone for hours with or without disks has no effect)
6) Please note that no "fun_plug" (I don't have a clue what this actually is) nor any own Linux is installed. There is nothing custom
whatsoever. Only the (now dead) official 1.03 firmware.

I contacted the Athens D-Link support on the telephone an hour ago and after explaining the problem I was told that the only solution is to RMA
the unit. But the Athens D-Link cannot RMA the unit since I have purchased it from Ebay from a German shop.
I contacted the German shop (via telephone) and I was told the RMA will take between 4-10 weeks (because they have to send it to their
distributor who in turn will send it to D-Link and vice versa). The USA D-Link hasn't responded yet (not a single email reply) and the UK D-Link
to whom I spoke on the phone refused to support (not RMA; just answer simple questions) a German (!!!!) product (hello D-Link people? are
there any brain cells left in your heads?).

Bottom line: SHAME TO YOU D-LINK

Any advise people?

Last edited by panos (2007-04-11 18:28:26)

radiusweb · 2007-04-11 13:51:53

Try removing both disks then power up. Then try your web browser. If you get a message saying something about "no disks detected, please insert disks" then most likely the firmware is fine and the problem is related to your hard disks. This happened to me once and the solution was to leave it in the blinking state for a few hours. At which point it finished whatever it was doing and finally let me in. In any event, removing the disks will tell you a lot. If you don't get the "disk detection" message (or SOME sort of message) in your browser even after booting without the hard disks then you're likely right about the firmware being messed up. (Time to call DLINK tech support for a warranty claim.)

One question. Are you using "fun_plug" and/or have your own Linux installed?

panos · 2007-04-11 14:09:42

Thanks for posting,

1) The unit is non-functional (no web interface as described above) regardless of the presence of disk(s) or no disks at all (I had tried that).
Currently I have left the 2 disks installed and I am giving it some hours alone in case it decides to resurrect.
2) No "fun_plug" (I don't have a clue what it actually is), no own Linux installed. Nothing custom whatsoever. Only the official 1.03 firmware.

I will edit my original posting to reflect those 2 notes.

panos · 2007-04-11 22:13:42

New findings:

I did a port scan on the device and port 55300 is open. If I query it that port here's what I get:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
- <root configId="55300" xmlns="urn:schemas-upnp-org:device-1-0" xmlns:dlna="urn:schemas-dlna-org:device-1-0">
- <specVersion>
<major>1</major>
<minor>1</minor>
</specVersion>
- <device>
<pnpx:X_hardwareId xmlns:pnpx="http://schemas.microsoft.com/windows/pnpx/2005/11">urn:www-dlink-com:device:NetworkAttachedStorage:1</pnpx:X_hardwareId>
<pnpx:X_compatibleId xmlns:pnpx="http://schemas.microsoft.com/windows/pnpx/2005/11">urn:www-dlink-com:device:NetworkAttachedStorage</pnpx:X_compatibleId>
<pnpx:X_deviceCategory xmlns:pnpx="http://schemas.microsoft.com/windows/pnpx/2005/11">Storage.NAS</pnpx:X_deviceCategory>
<deviceType>urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:MediaServer:1</deviceType>
<presentationURL>http://192.168.1.30/</presentationURL>
<friendlyName>DNS-323</friendlyName>
<manufacturer>D-Link Corporation</manufacturer>
<manufacturerURL>http://www.redsonic.com</manufacturerURL>
<modelDescription>D-Link Network Storage Enclosure</modelDescription>
<modelName>DNS-323</modelName>
<modelNumber>103</modelNumber>
<serialNumber>0000001</serialNumber>
<UDN>uuid:461d2c03-23a2-7c24-cb2800195b779e02</UDN>
- <serviceList>
- <service>
<serviceType>urn:schemas-upnp-org:service:ConnectionManager:1</serviceType>
<serviceId>urn:upnp-org:serviceId:CMGR_0-99</serviceId>
<SCPDURL>ConnectionManager/scpd.xml</SCPDURL>
<controlURL>ConnectionManager/control</controlURL>
<eventSubURL>ConnectionManager/event</eventSubURL>
</service>
- <service>
<serviceType>urn:schemas-upnp-org:service:ContentDirectory:1</serviceType>
<serviceId>urn:upnp-org:serviceId:CDS_0-99</serviceId>
<SCPDURL>ContentDirectory/scpd.xml</SCPDURL>
<controlURL>ContentDirectory/control</controlURL>
<eventSubURL>ContentDirectory/event</eventSubURL>
</service>
</serviceList>
<dlna:X_DLNADOC xmlns:dlna="urn:schemas-dlna-org:device-1-0">DMS-1.00</dlna:X_DLNADOC>
</device>
</root>

panos · 2007-04-13 02:33:01

And here are the latest news:

After almost 40 hours trying to get any type of support from D-Link Greece,Germany,USA and the UK all I am left with are
the oral refusal of all to provide any type of support plus a written refusal from D-Link USA. Here it is:
"
Hello,
Unfortunately, D-Link USA is unable to provide assistance for customers outside of United States. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Have a nice day. "

and here is my reply:
"
Hello,
as told before I am located in Athens-Greece and the DNS-323 was purchased from an on-line German shop via Ebay.
Although I have desperately asked for assistance from you (written technical advise and answers to my questions via e-mail and NO RMA)
you have refused. After spending an excess amount of time on domestic and abroad phone calls this morning and afternoon
I have come to this conclusion:

1) D-Link USA doesn't provide assistance to customers outside the United States.
2) D-Link Greece won't support me because my product was purchased from Germany
3) D-Link Germany charges a ridiculous amount of money per minute for phone support and when someone bothered to answer
I found out they can't support me because no one speaks English; hence no support!
3) Next logical assumption is to call an other European D-Link office (like one of your colleagues advised); the UK for example.
But guess what: D-Link UK won't support me because it's a German product! (that's what the guy told me anyway) and I must
contact D-Link Germany directly. When I cried that nobody speaks English in D-Link Germany HQ I was told "then learn German" (!).

So, it all comes to this:
I will never ever buy a D-Link product in my life and as an IT manager I will make sure I will let my friends, colleagues and customers know
about your products and support. I will also make sure I will post my D-Link/DNS-323 adventure in as many sites possible, for I wish to
hurt your reputation as much as you have hurt my patience, nerves and wallet.
Finally, I hope you have at least the decency to show this email to one of your supervisors.

Thank you very much and have a nice day."

Needless to say that nobody replied anything after this...

The only option I see right now is to track the shop I bought it from and try to RMA it.

votum · 2007-04-13 12:21:55

Man! I know that D-Links so called "support" sucks big time after having talked to them several times regarding issues I have had, but this is off the chart!
All problems I have had have been solved with the help from the users of this Wiki and it's incredible that D-Link charge their customers when they are so incompetent.

I totally support you in your "bad-mouthing" mission of D-Link!

sala · 2007-04-13 13:00:45

panos wrote:
1) D-Link USA doesn't provide assistance to customers outside the United States.
2) D-Link Greece won't support me because my product was purchased from Germany
3) D-Link Germany charges a ridiculous amount of money per minute for phone support and when someone bothered to answer
I found out they can't support me because no one speaks English; hence no support!
3) Next logical assumption is to call an other European D-Link office (like one of your colleagues advised); the UK for example.
But guess what: D-Link UK won't support me because it's a German product! (that's what the guy told me anyway) and I must
contact D-Link Germany directly. When I cried that nobody speaks English in D-Link Germany HQ I was told "then learn German" (!).

So true. For example I did purchase DSM-G600 from United States (serial number did prove it) and I did post support tickets to US site but my mail address at the support form ends with .ee (Estonia), so they did tell me to (piss off) contact your local support (like I have one here in Estonia).

But for me D-Link products are inexpensive and I am not rich so I don't mind to mess around little bit to get thing working on my own.

kimhav · 2007-04-13 14:01:15

Well, about D-Link support, I guess that most of us agree when it comes to get some real knowledge out of thoose guys. Suggest: try to get an article or post published at Slashdot... that might change their mind a bit getting Slashdoted. Another suggestion is to contact D-Link headquarter directly and the CEO and is possible get the letter translated into Chinese. Then usually things get on the edge. I'm ref to a long thread on another forum where a user was quite upset on Lenovo and a problem with a ThinkPad. Lenovo US told more or less that this guy was an idiot (making a long story short) so he wrote a letter and got help to translate it to chinese and sent it of to the CEO of Lenovo.... well, 2 weeks later someone from Lenovo US called him and asked where they could send him the replacement system without any charge. Just a thought.

panos · 2007-04-13 15:10:37

Thanks for your suggestions and support guys. I sent my story to Slashdot in the hopes that they will publish it.
Also translating to Japanese and sending it to HQ is a very nice idea.
In the mean time I have shipped the DNS-323 to the German shop hoping that I will have a new one back, sometime
in the next 4-10 weeks.

Aaron · 2007-04-13 20:00:20

I wouldnt' translate it to japanese ;0, HQ is in TW.

-Aaron

phil · 2007-04-13 20:35:01

Maybe just use plain English They have to use English there too... otherwise they can't sell across the world. I've seen some broken English emails that came out of Taiwan, but some from there have perfect or almost perfect English.

panos · 2007-04-13 21:51:06

Well, if only I could find an email in their HQ pages. Everything is (of course) in Taiwanese....
The DNS-323 page is http://www.dlinktw.com.tw/support/downl … QDOFO#dndf
but there doesn't seem to be any email in there either.

Can anybody see any email in their pages?

Aaron · 2007-04-13 23:16:55

Im not quite sure what you hope to accomplish by email Dlink HQ. Dlink has pretty strict rules on supporting people in other countries. One of their main things is, if you buy it somewhere, and it leaves that country, its basically no longer supported by them via Tech Support. All in all your experience seems to be isolated being that your flash failed on your DNS-323. This would be a simple RMA through D-link had you been in the same Country using it as it was purchased.

I wouldn't take one bad experience to heart though since D-link does produce some decent quality products. Everyone has bad experiences with Technical Support with other companies.

-Aaron

fordem · 2007-04-13 23:43:26

Aaron wrote:
Im not quite sure what you hope to accomplish by email Dlink HQ. Dlink has pretty strict rules on supporting people in other countries. One of their main things is, if you buy it somewhere, and it leaves that country, its basically no longer supported by them via Tech Support. All in all your experience seems to be isolated being that your flash failed on your DNS-323. This would be a simple RMA through D-link had you been in the same Country using it as it was purchased.

I wouldn't take one bad experience to heart though since D-link does produce some decent quality products. Everyone has bad experiences with Technical Support with other companies.

-Aaron

And that, by the way, is an industry standard support policy.

phil · 2007-04-14 01:39:30

Suppose Panos still like to try D-Link Taiwan, maybe send an email to webmaster@dlinktw.com.tw and ask for their VP Customer Service's email address.

panos · 2007-04-14 02:12:13

fordem wrote:
Aaron wrote:
Im not quite sure what you hope to accomplish by email Dlink HQ. Dlink has pretty strict rules on supporting people in other countries. One of their main things is, if you buy it somewhere, and it leaves that country, its basically no longer supported by them via Tech Support. All in all your experience seems to be isolated being that your flash failed on your DNS-323. This would be a simple RMA through D-link had you been in the same Country using it as it was purchased.

I wouldn't take one bad experience to heart though since D-link does produce some decent quality products. Everyone has bad experiences with Technical Support with other companies.

-Aaron
And that, by the way, is an industry standard support policy.

1) Flashing didn't fail. If you read carefully you will see that flashing completed successfully. Furthermore the unit was working fine after the
flashing for about half an hour. It is after that half an hour that the unit decided on its own to corrupt its name from DNS-323 (which was the
default) to a cryptic sequence of unprintable characters.

2) I never asked for an RMA from D-Link USA, Greece, Germany or the UK. All I DID ask was to answer some simple technical questions I had
because I was told by the German shop that the RMA would take between 4-10 weeks. You fail to realise that D-Link didn't bother reading my
problem let alone answer!

3) The best scenario is to buy a product which will function flawlessly for its life span and never need support for it. But this is not an ideal world and
computer products NEED support. This is where a good after-sales company makes a difference.

4) And that - thank God - IS not an industry standard support policy. I can name many products I own, that have been bought abroad
and yet companies have domestically helped in any way they could; even RMA a few times. As an example, I purchased my car from Germany
a few years ago. Can you imagine the domestic authorized dealer refusing to support me and suggesting to contact Germany?
Moreover, what if I had purchased a DNS-323 in my last visit in New York and brought it here? Would that delete my right for support?

5) Large corporations have become global. The internet and e-commerce have brought down the geographic borders. Companies that fail to
realize this will get panished by customers; it's just a matter of time.

Last edited by panos (2007-04-14 12:00:55)

Xepol · 2007-04-16 17:52:11

I don't think you realize that DLink Germany and DLink USA are two totally different companies that don't share financial resources with each other. They might mail cheques home to Taiwan, but you can bet that DLink USA doesn't get a dime refunded from Germany or Taiwan for supporting companies that buy from the German markets, as such they don't want to waste their resources when you have what seems to them to be a clear access to german support (logic being that if you can buy from them, you must be able to interact with them somehow)

Worse, thanks to the fact that they are legally different companies which are licencsed by their parent company to provided products and support, they probably have actual legal barriers preventing them from poaching in each other's territories, which would automatically prevent one region from supporting customers from the other.

Ya, it is annoying, and ya, you probably shouldn't buy products from 3rd party vendors in other countries and expect support. You might even be trampling a few distribution rights by doing that (which are heavily protected in many countries).

Personally, I wouldn't buy anything I wanted supported if I didn't have immediate physical access to the store that sold it. Heck, even in country, just trying to get support from another city can be a freaking nightmare. You really need to be there to smack the morons upside the head with the bad device to convince them that it isn't some kind of scam and they MIGHT just actually have to do something for you.

As far as the car analogy goes, I've never seen a NAS crash and cause a 12 NAS pile up with multiple fatalities - There is probably a reason the service on your car isn't quite the same, ya?

I'm glad you've found a few worldly companies. Care to share names? I'm sure most of us would prefer to work with enlightened companies when possible.

DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

Announcement

#1 2007-04-11 10:58:29

Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

#2 2007-04-11 13:51:53

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

#3 2007-04-11 14:09:42

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

#4 2007-04-11 22:13:42

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

#5 2007-04-13 02:33:01

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

#6 2007-04-13 12:21:55

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

#7 2007-04-13 13:00:45

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

panos wrote:

#8 2007-04-13 14:01:15

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

#9 2007-04-13 15:10:37

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

#10 2007-04-13 20:00:20

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

#11 2007-04-13 20:35:01

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

#12 2007-04-13 21:51:06

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

#13 2007-04-13 23:16:55

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

#14 2007-04-13 23:43:26

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

Aaron wrote:

#15 2007-04-14 01:39:30

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

#16 2007-04-14 02:12:13

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

fordem wrote:

Aaron wrote:

#17 2007-04-16 17:52:11

Re: Firmware 1.03 destroyed my DNS-323- Please help!

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