D7000 Freeze / Lock up

[fantomsam]

Hello, I have one D7000 wireless modem-router and I use it as access point. The problem that I had is that every 15 minutes after of a reboot the device freeze and the network adapters of the device it's locked. What can I do?

Btw the firmware on the device is the latest I had check also for updates. 

[michaelkenward]

How is it set up? What does the network look like? Do you need to tweak the modem settings to play nicely with the router function of the D7000? For example, do you have competing DHCP servers?

If you haven't found it, the manual is here:

>>> D7000 | Product | Support | NETGEAR <<<

[fantomsam]

Hello, I think that I fix the problem. 
Whole story below:
First I try to reflash with the latest firmware, its success but the problem of freezing na blocking was remain.
Then, I try to reset the settings. Everything goes worst after of the reset. The device then freezes after of 15min of operation. 
Then I notice that the device was unnormal hot on the one side (close to cpu), so I apply some freezing spray every 10 min at this area and with this make tha device to do not freeze again. 
Then I disassemble the device and I apply some thermal paste on the cp and i replace also the RAM heatsink. After of this it's works for 4 days until now and does not had freeze get. 

[michaelkenward]

Nice bit of research and engineering. Do you live in the tropics? Sounds like crummy design to me.

[fantomsam]

No, I leaving in Nordic Europe (Finland) and the place where this device it's installed have enviroment temperature from 17 to 27°C. 

[m0nty75]

I have the exact same problem.

Latest firmware, a gazillion resets. Nothing fixes it. The whole router just freezez, no LAN, no wifi, nothing.

I tried arctic silver paste on the cpu, but that didn't solve it either. 

What I ended up doing was buying a 15" laptop cooler  from ebay which is powered by USB (it's like  a stand that you sit your laptop with fans), cost me £20.

So sat the  router on top of the laptop cooler, plugged in the USB. It was perfect. no freezing and stable.

To test, after about a week  of constant running with no  freezing up, i disconnected the laptop cooler again,  20 mins later  the damn thing had froze again and had to be rebooted. tried several times, no luck.  Switched the laptop cooler back  on again, it's now been running without any freezing or issues whatsoever for well over 10 days.

In  short, the problem is with cooling, the tacky thin heatsink on  the CPU is useless and can't dissipate enough heat away, the only way to fix it is with better cooling, either a far  more efficient heatsink (though you're limited  by how much space there is). Or do what I have done and sit it on a laptop  cooler.

[fantomsam]

Hello m0nty75
Try to replace the heatsink of the RAM, it's a square thing like a stone check the picture and it's glued on the ram with a double side tape (none thermocontactive). Personaly I change this with a metal one and I glue it on the ram chip with thermocontactive glue.

I think that it's cause the problem and not only the cpu heatsink.
When I has this problem I enable the Syslog of the D7000 and I send it to a server where we had on the office. There I saw some memory overflow problems, after the replace of the RAM's heatsink and put thermalcontactive paste to the CPU heatsink that errors does not appeard and the D7000 does not freeze again.

[fantomsam]

Hi to the comunity, Today I upgrade the firmware of the D7000 to the latest, and I notice a problem in the access point mode that I use it. If you have static ip configuration the D7000 become slow (but does not freezing), If you put the gateway out of your network on to a dead ip it's functioning normaly. 

[michaelkenward]

---

@fantomsam wrote:

Hi to the comunity, Today I upgrade the firmware of the D7000 to the latest, and I notice a problem in the access point mode that I use it.

---

Did you reset the router to factory settings after the firmware flash?

New firmware sometimes introduces changes that are not compatible with the old configuration.

So while it isn't guaranteed to fix things a factory reset is the first thing to try if you have problems with new firmware.

You can backup your settings before you reset and restore them later. But that may just bring back the fault. Then again, at least you will know if the reset fixed the problem.

[Peckerwood]

I am probably one of the most frustrated Netgear users on here. My original D7000 was swapped with Netgear because it would not hold an internet connection.  Each day the D7000 degrades as the number of disconnects from the internet incresase. It has become so bad it will not stay operational for then an hour at a time.  Paid my $25 for a rapid replacement... Now fast forward to three weeks later... In the beginning the replacement operated just okay.  Now after week three it has degraded to the point as the original.  I also own a EX7000 which performs just okay.  I did own a EX6120 and it begain to fail.  So I replaced it and the new one also failed upon arrival so it was quickly returned for a TP-Link extender and it outperformed the EX6120.

I am so disappoint in Netgear products the ones I own will eventually be replaced with TP-Link or Linksys.