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Forum Discussion
R7000P losing 2.4Ghz wireless completely after a few hours
Purchased R7000P December 2020; worked flawlessly for all wifi on both 2.4Ghz and 5.0 Ghz using default settings, latest firmware since new until 2 days ago when the 2.4Ghz wireless just stopped work...
Thanks for the reply. Firmware version is V1.3.1.64_10.1.36
I have done a factory reset (hold button 7 seconds, power cycle, R7000P goes back to factory defaults, and then I set device pw, SSID, and wireless password, leaving all other settings as factory defaults.
Immediately after factory reset, 2.4ghz did not work at all; I found through experimentation, that changing the 2.4ghz wireless channel setting from "auto" to a fixed number, like 4, 8, or 11 would start working immediately after "applying" the channel change, for about 1 minute, then freeze up again. So, whatever is failing is not a "hard" failure, it can come back to life without a power-cycle, but it doesn't live long. Switching channels wakes up the 2.4Ghz, at least for a short time.
I did not reflash the firmware image to the device as it was already loaded with the latest .36 firmware; I suppose the next thing to try would be doing a reflash, so I'll do that when I have time and continue to try random other things, and report back here.
I'm not hopeful, this problem has been going on for years, reported by dozens of people across many different versions of firmware. I think its a hardware issue, I think netgear knows what it is and has decided its not cost effective to fix it in this product, so they've gone silent about it. It's likely some devices are just longer lived than others, if its because an individual component is wearing out, then its luck of the draw when it finally gives out, could be months, could be years. Even if I get netgear to replace my R7000P, I would expect the replacement to fail eventually the same way, the only real solution will be to throw away the R7000P and replace it with something else.
You're actually a bit behind on firmware.
the current version is 1.3.2.134
might be worth installing that over a hardwired connection and seeing how it works.
Yeah, just noticed newer firmware is available as well. i was under the mistaken impression I was on the latest because I'd ask the router to check for latest firmware and it would come back and say nothing newer was found... Clearly a bug in the auto-updater, as I checked the support site and found V1.3.2.134_10.1.66. I just reflashed with that. It took a power cycle to get the R7000P back up and working after the reflash, but the 2.4ghz is working at least for the first 5 minutes. I'll keep an eye on it and report back a bit later. thanks for the responses.
EDIT: Well, its about 15 minutes later, that didn't take long, 2.4ghz dead again.
Did you factory reset after the update?
The only over version of the firmware I'd recommend would be 1.3.0.20.
Its the verison prior to netgear armor being added to the firmware. When armor first came out, it seemed like many devices struggled with it. Maybe your router is one.
its a big enough change that if you do downgrade to it, make sure to do it as a clean install (not from a backup). Netgear had to remove several services to add armor.
I've performed a full factory reset as part of updating the firmware image. I think everything's been done that could be done from a user perspective; downgrading firmware prior to the armor feature coming in won't make a difference, unit was working fine for months with armor enabled firmware before crapping out. I'm concluding based on the reports from others, and my experiments here, and absence of a solution from Netgear, that its a hardware issue of some kind.