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aprayiii's avatar
aprayiii
Star
Jan 13, 2022
Solved

Nighthawk(R) X4S R7800 MD5 Verify Error

Getting an MD5 Verify error when trying to install new firmware. I saw some old posts about this but nothing recent. Any advice appreciated.
  • aprayiii's avatar
    aprayiii
    Mar 18, 2022

    Wooohooo! Mine worked correctly. And BTW I did NOT have to do any sort of reset, just went to the update and it worked fine from a Chrome session connected wirelessly. 

Kitsap's avatar
Kitsap
Master
Feb 18, 2022

Your "tend to think theory" is just that, a theory based on your limited experience.  Experience on this board with Netgear products and experience on another board with ASUS products indicates otherwise.  Direct firmware update via a web browser and an ethernet connection results in significantly fewer issues than updates over Wi-Fi.  When updates are completed without issue you seldom have users posting on the boards.  Whey they go bad you have a lot of negative posts.

 

For firmware updates over Wi-Fi it is not a case of if they will go bad, it is simply a matter of time until they do.

 

 

dhe wrote:

I'd tend to think that using a hardwired connection for the manual update is safer than using a WiFi connection, because in that case the.img firmware file has to be downloaded on your PC first, then uploaded to the router via the web interface. AFAICT there's no MD5 verification in that case, so if the firmware file gets corrupted during the transfer, this might pass unnoticed by the router, which would then proceed with the installation and might end up in an unbootable or non-functional state.

 

I guess that using a WiFi connection to trigger an automated update check and installation is less likely to cause such problems, as indeed the firmware download takes place directly on the router and in that case is followed by an MD5 verification.

 

 

 

 

jmidway22's avatar
jmidway22
Guide
Feb 18, 2022

haha his "limited experience", we pleebs and our weak technical experience strikes again! and now that we are done reasoning from authority lets try objective analysis..

 

still doesn't make sense why the wifi would have any impact on manually kicking off the auto update functionality on the netgear admin console. your browser literally sends one packet over wifi with a post message in it to the local webserver on the router.. whether that packet travels over an eth cable or wifi, there is no way this would cause this issue or brick a router. if this packet is dropped or corrupted, it will just not kickoff the firmware update process. also the very same process except for the post is automatically performed by the netgear software without issue when you have it set to autoupdate.

 

with the widespread use of asynch processes on webservers, your internet connection does not impact the background process of firmware update. so for auto update, it does its thing whether you are connected or not. and with a manual update, it will wait till you upload the new firmware .img, run the MD5 check and only when those two pass, it will then continue its asynch process to flash the rom. your connection to the router will have no impact on the flash process.

 

i am sure some old or crap routers have poor flashing software that is not asynch but can't say it as some universal without even understanding why.