Re: Devices losing connection on V1.0.4.30 firmware

JerseyBiker · ‎2015-07-23

I have a R7000 I purchased March of 2014. It's on 24 hours has worked without hardly any issues until the last firmware upgrade. I have many wireless devices including 2 Windows laptops, 2 Android tablets, iPad, 2 iPods, Android phone, iPhone, Panasonic TV, Denon receiver, Oppo Blu-Ray player and 2 printers. Since the firmware update many of my devices for no apparent reason lose connection. Not all of them at the same time but one at a time. No matter what I do I cannot get the disconnected device re-connected without re-booting the router. This an almost daily problem and I never know which device is next to lose connection. Should I try an older firmware or is there a router setting I should try. I appreciate any advice.

netwrks · ‎2015-07-23

Did you factory reset router before and after upgrade? That's best way to ensure all of the fw upgrade works. Gets rid of any nasty artifacts (config or old fw realted) and loads any new drivers that may be included in a fw release.

View solution in original post

netwrks · ‎2015-07-23

Did you factory reset router before and after upgrade? That's best way to ensure all of the fw upgrade works. Gets rid of any nasty artifacts (config or old fw realted) and loads any new drivers that may be included in a fw release.

JerseyBiker · ‎2015-07-23

@netwrks wrote:
Did you factory reset router before and after upgrade? That's best way to ensure all of the fw upgrade works. Gets rid of any nasty artifacts (config or old fw realted) and loads any new drivers that may be included in a fw release.

You know I didn't think about that. It's not that I never knew about a factory reset but for some reason I just forgot. As a matter of fact I don't remember ever doing a reset on this router and I have had several updates. Well I'm going to do it now. I'll let you know in a few days if it resolved my issue. Thank you very much for the very fast reply.

dendman · ‎2015-07-27

I can verify the R7000 issue with the latest .30 firmware, very nasty bug it really hosed the network\router on the 5G side and affected overall performance...I had to revert to .28 to rectify and will not update until this is been fixed.

egiprime · ‎2015-07-29

Im having dissconnects all the time since the last update as well. I have never had any problems for a year and now it wont stay connected.

I did a reset but the latest firmware stayed? I thought it was supposed to reset everything?

netwrks · ‎2015-07-29

A factory reset, resets the firmware the router is running to factory default settings. If you want to change the firmware you running, download from the Netgear site, to your desktop and restore from there. To be clear, I am not talking about a router reboot (power off / power on), I am talking about a reset to factory defaults, by depressing the reset button on the back of router, until the router power light starts to flash.

scibot · ‎2015-08-01

I also had this issue, and I've never had to go back to the older firmware, but I did this time. Sicne the downgrade no issues at all...

djrosen · ‎2015-08-05

I have had an issue with the 5G side also with the newest firmware. It drops the 5G connection on all of my devices (PC, iPad, iPhone, TV). I have tried rebooting the router and unplugging the router which does not fix the problem. Have done a factory reset before installing the new firmware and still having problems. I don't have any problem with the 2.4G side. Also intermittently loose connection to 3.0 USB hard drive connected to router. Contacted Netgear Tier 2 technical support and they said they were not aware of any problems with the 5G dropping with the latest firmware. I reverted to the previous firmware and the problem was resolved. The Netgear tech suggested I replace the router to rule out a hardware issue. They sent me another and had the same issue with the replacement. I am sticking with the .28 firmware for now.

JerseyBiker · ‎2015-08-05

Netwrks I think you were correct. It's been almost 2 weeks since I did the factory reset and I haven't had any issues since. Even 5ghz which was acting weird not connecting at all sometimes casuing me to only use 2.4ghz is working OK now. I probably had 2 or 3 firmware updates without a factory reset. It's not something I'ts not something that I wasn't aware of, I guess I just forgot about it. Thank you very much.

netwrks · ‎2015-08-05

Good to hear all is well..

egiprime · ‎2015-08-05

I reverted the firmware back to the previous version. It runs like it use to now with zero problems. It has not lost connection since. With the new firmware it would not stay connected and I would have to reboot the router each time to get the connection to establish and it would drop it after a few minutes.

JamesGL · ‎2015-08-07

Hi @egiprime,

Please reset the router to factory default after the firmware update. Once reset has been done, reconfigure the router manually.

Regards,

JamesGL

Community Team

fracamm · ‎2015-08-08

Same issue on this release. After some time wifi disconnects. Devices try to connect without succcess never reaching up to receiving an ip address. Did a factory reset and manual basic config, but no change. Will revert to .28 i presume.

JerseyBiker · ‎2015-08-09

Factory reset seems to have resolved my problem so far. It's been over two weeks without any router issues. But if it starts acting up again I'll revert to the prior update.

fracamm · ‎2015-08-12

Reloaded my config and restarted, and now is stable for 4 days with the latest release. Wonderfull.

Cat6aPlease · ‎2015-08-15

I'm running V1.0.4.30_1.1.67 and did the factory reset and still have problems. Are you sure you did a factory reset, you might ask me? Yes I'm sure, I spent half a day reconfiguring.

As of now I do not even see either my regular or guest 5G freq networks listed when I scan the airwaves, only the 2Gs. This is super frustrating. People told me I should buy an enterprise class router and not this consumer stuff and now I see why. Somebody really messed up in regression testing.

On a separate topic, can Netgear please build their wireless channel scanning tool into the routers themselves, so I can see what are the clearest bands in my congested apartment building? I don't have an Android telephone so I can't run this tool Netgear recommends. Why isn't the capability to display channel usage built in? Go ahead, make fun of my Windows phone. I think I read Win Phone 10 has an API for a channel frq tool.

Netgear please fix this firmware ASAP before I junk it and buy your competitor's product

JamesGL · ‎2015-08-17

Hi @Cat6aPlease,

Welcome to Community!

Can you confirm if your devices supports 5GHz band? The reason that it will not detect 5Ghz as your devices might not be dual band.

For wireless scanning tool, the Desktop genie has that feature which will show which channels are congested and which are clear.

Regards,

JamesGL

Community Team

Cat6aPlease · ‎2015-08-17

James,

Thank you for the response, and I appreciate you have to deal with the lowest common denominator here, but the first question is insulting. The router is an R7000, so yes, it has 5G frqs. I mean it used to, before this untested firmware update broke them.

Where in the "Genie" application can I find the congestion tool? This would be very helpful. I had to uninstall the Genie, because without asking me, it installed a media server. This gummed up my 4K TV, an excellent Sony XBR65X900B. That was very frustrating, and I spent more time figuring out where in the world this crapware "genie server" was coming from, because I never explicitly installed it (answer: Netgear Genie).

Thank you and I do appreciate your response. Any updates on when a fixed firmware will be released?

JamesGL · ‎2015-08-20

Hi @Cat6aPlease,

I apologize for my first question but what I meant is if your devices(laptop, phones, others) are capable of 5Ghz.

When opening Genie, click on WiFi connection option then WiFi channel. You will be able to see which channels are clear and congested.

Regards,

JamesGL

Community Team

Cat6aPlease · ‎2015-08-22

James,

This is sort of better, let me explain.

My desktop is wired and most of my devices (TV, 4k server, video games, security camera, etc) are wired. My laptops only run on 2.4g. My telephones and the occasional random device runs on 5g.

Thus, the Netgear Genie tool is still not helpful from running on my desktop or laptops. This should be functionality built into the router.

That said, I grabbed my dongle, inserted it into an open slot, and was able to probe for congested channels - so thank you, now I can see 20 of my neighbors clobbering for the same 2 channels amongst others spread out.

FYI Google seems to have noticed this deficiency in competing routers, and one of the main features they announced of some new cylindrical router they are going to start selling has this channel scanning ability built in.

Any updates on a new firmware?

Thank you

JamesGL · ‎2015-08-24

Hi @Cat6aPlease,

There is no update yet if there is a new upcoming firmware. You may check the support site for updates.

Regards,

JamesGL

Community Team

netwrks · ‎2015-08-25

@Cat6aPlease If you are running an R7000, check out this firmware. It's easy to load, the instructions are clear, software is stable, and more features.

scibot · ‎2015-08-25

@netwrks wrote:
@Cat6aPlease If you are running an R7000, check out this firmware. It's easy to load, the instructions are clear, software is stable, and more features.

That actually looks pretty cool, thanks for the link, I think I will flash that on my R7000. I've actually tried DD-WRT on mine before but it was so crappy.

netwrks · ‎2015-08-25

It's better than DD-WRT.. If yo have a 100Mbps link or better, do not enable QoS. CTF needs to run.

Cat6aPlease · ‎2015-08-25

netwrks, thanks for that. That is very intriguing. I will have to look in more detail (particularly at stability), and I presume it is easy to back out? I guess I don't have a lot to lose!

What's this CTF jib jab you mentioned?