RBS850 rebooting after firmware downgrade

Question

After a recent firmware upgrade, I was having some troubles with DNS resolution on my RBR850/RBS850x2 system. After a lot of troubleshooting I narrowed it down to the router. Though, that's not the focus of this post.

I did decide to roll back to a previous firmware where I'd had no issues. V4.6.3.16 for both router and satellitesafter also factory resetting all of them prior to rollback (wanted as few variables as possible).

I have successfully set back up the the router and one of the satellites. However, the second satellite has yet to sync.

A few things I see/notice:

It appears to be constantly rebooting.
I have done a 30/30/30 reset on it, more than once.
I have attempted to sync in close proximity to the router, no good.
I have attempted to sync via direct ethernet connection between the two using a known good patch cable.
Running lan scans (while direct wired) I see it come up as both x.x.1.250 and x.x.1.191.
When it shows green (per attached lan scan) I can briefly log into it directly via web UI using default credentials (admin/password)
However, on the occasion where the login succeeds, I can only see the left navigation and no body content. And there is no indication of the firmware currently being run.

Is it possible the firmware didn't take on that satellite? All indicators suggested success, like the other one. If so, recourse? Upgrade the router again to try and sync?

Any other thoughts/suggestions/back-doors would be greatly appreciated.

Finally, I did reference this post: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi-WiFi-6-AX-and-WiFi-6E-AXE/RBS850-Satellite-Constant-Rebooting-and-Failing/m-p/2005708#M9269 but didn't see much to help or that it was a similar situation.

PS, on the upside, with the router and functioning satellite, the DNS issues are gone!

FURRYe38 · Answer

During the phase people started posting seeing problems of there systems not working, I manually downgraded mine to v.16 then let it sit over night and it updated to v.2 fine and continued to work. This was before NG took down v.2.&nbsp;
Was curious if you had the local v.2 files you could manually update everything to v.2 and run it. Others have posted they were able to re-update everything manually and it was fine.&nbsp;

spiceyux · Answer

Yeah, these last activities, I've had them, all three, sitting next to each other. Also, just repeated the 30/30/30 on all three and flashed them to the v4.6.3.9 and attempted to set up a new network from scratch. Couldn't do it. That same satellite keeps failing to sync on the v4 firmware. I don't think it's a question of the firmware taking, just something about that satellite really does not like starting with v4 from scratch.&nbsp;At this point, I'll have to break down and contact support. Appreciate the sounding board&nbsp;FURRYe38 and if nothing else, this thread is good documentation.&nbsp;

spiceyux · Answer

Well, I mucked around with it some more. Eventually decided to run nmrpflash on it. This is the unbricking tool that uses Netgears underlying NMRP protocol.

Interestingly, when I flashed it with the v4.6.3.16 chk image I'd used on the "good" satellite, it still wouldn't sync.

So, I flashed it down to v3.2.18.1, and then it was able to successfully attach and sync to the RBR850, running v4.6.3.16.

I then went back and tried the online flash update via the RBR850 web UI. "Update failed"

Next, downloaded and flashed it to V4.6.3.9 which was successfully uploaded, however, still couldn't attach/sync to the RBR850.

Now, rolled it back to the v3 firmware and it connected again. THEN I checked to see if the firmware might auto upgrade, and lo and behold, there it was. So, I initiated the firmware update to v4.6.3.16 upgrade, which it appeared to do... and now won't connect again to the base...

At this point, once my family can deal with me tearing apart the network again, I may try rolling all devices (RBR850 & RBS850s) down to the v3.2.18.1 firmware. Then, we'll see if we can slowly upgrade it all back up to v4.6.3.16.

Again, any thoughts/opinions on this, would be very appreciated.

FURRYe38 · Answer

I would have tried using NMRP too to put v.16 on the RBS initially.&nbsp;
&nbsp;

spiceyux · Answer

Thanks, that's what I'd hoped and have been trying to go at it methodically but now I'm just kind of scratching my head a bit. I'll tear it apart and report back in the next few days.&nbsp;&nbsp;

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RBS850 rebooting after firmware downgrade

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