Dell PowerConnect 6224 There was an error during decompression… resetting the switch

Recently a customer requested help to firmware upgrade a Dell PowerConnect 6224 switch. He had attempted to upgrade it from TFTP and HTTP, but unfortunately both ways he would recieve error “There was an error during decompression… resetting the switch” when booting the new firmware. He could still boot the old firmware.

Since the customer had already tried both HTTP and TFTP I decided to save the configuration and update the firmware using XMODEM.

To start the process I connected my serial cable to the switch, opened the connection using TeraTerm and restarted the switch.

Here are my next steps:

1. As soon as you see the Boot Menu type 2 (Start Boot Menu) and press ENTER

2. Type 6 (Run flash diagnostics) and press ENTER

3. Type y and press ENTER

4. You will see output similar to this:

5. When you see the text Flash Diagnostics passed it is time to power cycle the switch

6. You will see out similar to this:

7. After some time the switch will ask if you want to input the MAC address, type y and press ENTER

8. Input the MAC address (look at bottom/back of switch) and press ENTER

9. Input the switch service tag and press ENTER

10. When you see the menu again type in 30 (Secret menu) and press ENTER

11. Input the secret password pc62xxkinnick and press ENTER then type 15 (Devshell command interface) and press ENTER

12. Type in creat(‘image1’,2) and press ENTER

13. Type in creat(‘image2’,2) and press ENTER

14. Power cycle the switch and when you see the boot menu type in 2 (Change baud rate) and press ENTER

15. Type 8 (Baud rate 115200) and press ENTER

16. Change baud rate in your terminal client – here is an example for TeraTerm

17. Type 4 (Load new operational code using XMODEM) and press ENTER

18. Start transfer of firmware using XMODEM – here is an example for TeraTerm

19. Select file and ensure you select 1K option at bottom then click Open

20. Wait for transfer to finish. Expect this to take 15 to 17 minutes.

21. Wait for switch to boot up

22. Type 7 (Update boot code) and press ENTER then type y and press ENTER

Thats it! Hopefully your switch should now be updated and ready to use.

As always, I would deeply appreciate you leaving a comment if this helped you!