I recently bought a used gateway to replace a bug-prone ISP-provided at an older relative's house. I use the v2 of this at home and knew how easy it was for me to configure, so I figured I'd get something similar for out there. Unfortunately, the seller included a power cord that was NOT appropriate (similar shape, but too long), and I didn't bother looking at it to verify it wasn't the Netgear one until after I'd plugged everything in and, upon not seeing an SSID broadcasted, tried to reset it. I think the dodgy power supply when resetting borked the firmware. What I'd see was similar to this user post:
https://community.netgear.com/t5/DSL-Modems-Routers/Problems-with-Night-Hawk-D7000-setup/td-p/204971... But, for all I know, I might have been sold something that didn't work to begin with. It does broadcast both the default 2.4 and 5.0 GHz SSIDs and seems like things would work if I could just get into the settings to connect to the ISP. When I couldn't get it working out there (realized the old gateway used a similar power cord to get a stable power supply), I brought it home. Much easier messing with this stuff when you also have cell service and can use your phone to Google issues!
At home, I used the power cord for my v2. I tried a simple reset again with no luck. I tried following the Netgear-provided instructions (
https://kb.netgear.com/000059634/How-do-I-upload-firmware-to-my-NETGEAR-router-using-TFTP-from-the-M...) to use tftp by command prompt to load new firmware onto it. Enabled tftp in Windows 11, downloaded and unzipped the most recent firmware for the device, navigated to the correct directory where the .img file was located in an elevated command prompt. I plugged an ethernet cable from the gateway to my laptop, set the laptop to a static IP of 192.168.0.10, mask 255.255.255.0, default gateway 192.168.0.1, primary dns 8.8.8.8. I could run 'ping 192.168.0.1' in cmd and get responses, so I assume I had the necessary network settings correct.
I turned the router off and back on with just my laptop connected by ethernet cable. The problem with the Netgear tftp guide is that it talks about a blinking orange power light, but I do not see that at any point as the gateway boots up. I tried entering the instructed 'tftp -i 192.168.0.1 put <firmware file name>' over and over again with reboots of the gateway to try at different points during boot to establish a connection. Every time, I'm told "connect request failed". Sometimes that displays within a second or two, other times it'll take 20+. I haven't used tftp before to know what the output in the command prompt should look like if things were going smoothly. For example, does it output something like "connection established\n" and then something that looks like "transmitting, please wait\n" if it's working, or is it just silent until the transfer completes? I'm getting frustrated with the constant connection failure messages and not being sure when exactly to submit the tftp text in the boot process. I've also disabled my firewall in case that was causing the problem. I cannot seem to get this working.
ping info:
ping -t -w 2 192.168.0.1
"General failure" while machine off
"Request timed out" while machine first starts up
"Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64" x 6 (I figured this was when I should submit the tftp command)
"General failure" some more times
"Request timed out.' once
"Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64" the rest of the time
So, if anyone can help me pin down when in the boot process to submit the tftp command, I'd really appreciate it! (Or, let me know if you see something else here that says it just won't work.) Otherwise, I'm sending this back to the seller for a refund. The relative has even slower DSL than I do, and they barely use the internet - it's mainly for visiting family. I don't want to put more $$ into this than necessary to get them something their ISP can't push broken updates to. By switching to the v2 of this at my home, I've had a much more stable internet experience, and that'd greatly benefit my fairly tech-illiterate family.
(If you need more info, let me know. Hopefully this is thorough enough.)
