To help all of those out there with Dahua IPC-HFW4300S-V2 Cameras.... I bricked one yesterday and had quite a time getting it unbricked.
There are several guides for un-bricking, but it's quite tricky to find the right firmware files and piece all the correct information together, so I put together this post to assist.
To summarize a lot of information from many different pages in this post and on this form:
-- If you have a 4300S V2, your firmware options are more limited. Seems like it's fairly hard to get english firmware.
-- None of the 4300S firmware update bin files seem to restore correctly, unless you replace the check.img from the original firmware, and place it into the updated firmware file and restore that.
-- Even if that works, you'll have to change the English files via telnet to SimpChinese... all this info is in this post somewhere, or in the post titled "Unbricking your Dahua IP camera (Tips, Tricks & Firmware)"
So, this brings me to my eventual solution:
Over the course of many hours, I was able to track down a file called General_IPC-4300S_Stream3_V2.420.0002.0.R.20140621_a.bin which somehow restores fine both via the web client and the Config Tool.... however this is very old software and the image actually looks very poor from the camera using this version. It also zoomed in the image somehow, I was missing quite a bit of my frame. I wasn't satisfied with this, so I extraced the check.img from this and placed it into several other firmware versions, overwriting the check.img in those, and tried restoring them. Most didn't work, but I did find one image file that did work, and have uploaded a link to that here.
Here's the link to the part in this thread where they talk about the check.img file: http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=280966&sid=30c8f67c23244678ad2bb0e7e6e0adaf#p280966
The quick info on replacing the check.img file is that it appears to allow the restoring of different versions of firmware, since it's using the check from the original version that works. You have to use a hex editor and change the first 2 letters of the file from DH to PK, then you have to install Total Commander (zipping it didn't work for me), and double click the .bin file (after you changed it to PK in a hex editor), which will allow you to see the files inside. You do this for both the original firmware that restores properly, as well as the new version you want to restore (that doesn't restore properly), then drag the check.img file from the original firmware to folder in total commander to the new firmware folder in total commander, overwriting the new folders' check.img file with the one from the original folder. After you finish that, change the first to letters back to DH using the hex editor, and restore the firmware using the Config Tool.
I've done all of that already for the firmware file I'm linking here... you should just be able to restore this firmware file and have it update to this newer version of the firmware. The only firmware version I could get this to work with was: V2.420.0005.0.R.20141205 - I found firmware files for 0007, 0008, and 0009, but for some reason when I did these same steps with those, it only seemed to restore 0005. Not sure why, but 0005 is working fine.
What I'm linking here is a patched General_IPC-HX5(4)XXX_Eng_N_Stream3_V2.420.0005.0.R.20141205.bin file that you should just be able to restore to any IPC-HFW4300S-V2 camera and be restored/updated to V2.420.0005.0 - Note that this is an english mod, so you'll actually be able to read what is going on. You do need to follow the steps to change the language from English to SimpChinese as outlined here: http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=267068#p267068
Follow those instructions to change the language, and reboot it and it should work fine.
Here is a link to all of my files on the Dahua cameras (includes all firmware I've been able to track down, Config Tools, etc):
https://mega.nz/#F!ZhIn3KyD!6ZPBRxam5ZewTmNNNIFH8w
Here is a link to the original firmware for the 4300S V2 cameras that restores fine, but it's old:
https://mega.nz/#!8kQSjbjQ!8zBzPOYIl7ktbIjcWEDBKJXd_rYP-CBlmiMxBRPsMj0
Here's a link to the latest version of the firmware that I could get to work, with a modified check.img file from the original firmware:
https://mega.nz/#!ZxBUVRDY!VEMEx6JI5uWOZlTaVhpq7z9LZyxzFXufYqYIXESuWXA
Remember if you use the last link to follow cctv_007's steps to change the language as outlined here: http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=267437#p267437
Hope this helps someone get it figured out faster than the 5 hours I spent on it yesterday.
