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I will NEVER buy a Netgear product again! Their equipment is crap, their customer support people are USELESS!!! Their support staff are idiots who waste more damned time with their niceties and scripted crap... "I'm so sorry that you're experiencing difficulties with your product..." BLAH, BLAH, BULL**bleep**!
This Nighthawk is more like a Nightmare! It sees network shares one minute and 10 minutes later it sees nothing. It constantly logs me in to my home network as PUBLIC so everytime my laptop connects I have to manually switch it from Public to Private. One minute my smart TVs can all see each other and see the USB drive attached to the 3.0 port on the Nightmare, and by the time I click through it all and want it to play the music or video file it drops off and the TV suddenly can't see it anymore....until I reboot. And I still haven't figured out how to get it to rebuild the DLNA database so that it sees new files added to Readyshare! The customer service is crap and they do nothing but apologize for their useless products!!!!!
@Dsrtplyr, your litany of problems is unreal. Way too many to be easily understood. Something is quite different with your LAN topology and operation.
DLNA not building another database after you deleted it? I'm wondering if you do have a bad hard drive like I did? Using the same port of not? USB drive powered or portable? Any of these could present a problem, and could a failing power supply to the router or a lose connection even? Something is not right with your setup?
Does the speed lose happen on all bands and wired connections? What are you basing this on?
Printer, you had Public/Private problems before and now it is worse? Does the printer have the lastest firmware? Do you have a Security mismatch? What happens if that SSID didn't have any security, same thing?
I've seen on a friends laptop very low connection speed (only one on the SSID) and thought the router was broken (also a NG). Turn out the wrong security was used for the Laptop. Picked the right one and the problem went away. What security do you have on each SSID?
My BEST suggestion to you, got to the Genie (on a browser) and log into the router. On the Advanced tab on the top on the left side select ADMINISTRATION, BACKUP SETTINGS tab, and then the last line's button, Revert to factory default settings, and presss ERASE. EVERYTHING will be gone and you MUST start fresh again. Either take screenshots of your settings or write them down. DO NOT restore a file with them, it could just put you right back where you are now with problems.
Rebuild the DLNA catalog, REAL EASY... delete the .DLNA folder and wait for it to repopulate. It should pickup new added files automatically.
Since it doesn't you say (mine did) there could be an underlying problem.
Although I did have an R7000, I got an R8000 and moved the USB drive over to the R8000. Made necessary changes to the router to use the drive as-is. Worked FINE for weeks. Then had similar problems to what you are describing. Took the drive to a PC and plugged it in. Windows would not mount it until CHKDSK was run in it. Found allocated files in freespace that should not be there. Took the drive back to the router and it worked fine for a day or two. Problems reappeared. Eventually even the PC could NOT repair the drive. The drive went bad, so it is possible you also are seeing signs of a corrupt disk or possible start of complete failure.
IrvSP - thanks for the response. Actually I had searched for the solution to the DLNA database problem for a couple of days and finally found the same recommendation on this support site. I accessed the share by plugging the drive into my laptop, navigated to the DLNA folder and deleted it. Just to be sure I checked the Recycle Bin and purged it there as well. I plugged it back into the R7000, was able to see the R7000 on my laptop under Network, but when I accessed it as a readySHARE directory it showed no files. I waited over 28 hours, checking it every 2 to 3 hours, and the ReadySHARE directory on my laptop, 3 smart tv's, 2 ipads, a Samsung Tablet, and my Note 4 still showed it empty. Not a single folder or file being shared (and the drive has over 485 GB of data).
I finally upgraded to the newest V1.0.9.28_10.2.32 firmware, let the router go through the motions, then reset it (I was told to reset it AFTER the firmware upgrade otherwise the reset is useless), and was just going to start as if it were a new router. For some reason it came back with the same router name I had changed it to and virtually all of the settings were the same. Nothing really had changed, EXCEPT:
Approx. 80% of the USB drive's files were now being shared so the DLNA database updated itself. (Improvement)
My upload speeds on the end user devices all dropped from the 50Mbps level to anywhere from 2.25Mbps-7.45Mbps! So now my internet is at a dial-up modem speed. (New Problem)
The Netgear Router UI will only show devices that are connected directly to the router via Ethernet cable. (New Problem)
My printer will display the router in it's list of wireless router options, but after I select it, enter the passphrase and tell it to connect it displays "Connecting..." for about 3 to 4 minutes and then says it can't locate the network.... even though it just listed it as a connection option. This printer has always connected to the network in seconds and I've never had a networking problem with it (Canon PIXMA MX479 Multifunction Wi-Fi printer).(New Problem)
Before the firmware upgrade my laptop would auto-connect to the network but as Public and I had to manually switch it to Private. Now, after the upgrade, it won't even connect automatically (even with the "Connect automatically" button checked). So each time I turn on my laptop I have to manually connect it to the router and the internet.(New Problem)
I have to edit each item in the Connected Devices list at least 3 times before the name will stay and show up in the list.(New Problem)
I am probably going to end up rolling it back to a firmware upgrade 2 or 3 versions before this current piece of coding misery. It seems impossible for their mentally impaired programmers to create a firmware release that actually works - the way it should - from the start - without the user having to tweak it here and there! Never once have I installed a firmware upgrade that didn't have some glitch in it.
I stand by my original declaration - NETGEAR PRODUCTS ARE COMPLETE CRAP!!!! USELESS GARBAGE!!!!
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
@Dsrtplyr, your litany of problems is unreal. Way too many to be easily understood. Something is quite different with your LAN topology and operation.
DLNA not building another database after you deleted it? I'm wondering if you do have a bad hard drive like I did? Using the same port of not? USB drive powered or portable? Any of these could present a problem, and could a failing power supply to the router or a lose connection even? Something is not right with your setup?
Does the speed lose happen on all bands and wired connections? What are you basing this on?
Printer, you had Public/Private problems before and now it is worse? Does the printer have the lastest firmware? Do you have a Security mismatch? What happens if that SSID didn't have any security, same thing?
I've seen on a friends laptop very low connection speed (only one on the SSID) and thought the router was broken (also a NG). Turn out the wrong security was used for the Laptop. Picked the right one and the problem went away. What security do you have on each SSID?
My BEST suggestion to you, got to the Genie (on a browser) and log into the router. On the Advanced tab on the top on the left side select ADMINISTRATION, BACKUP SETTINGS tab, and then the last line's button, Revert to factory default settings, and presss ERASE. EVERYTHING will be gone and you MUST start fresh again. Either take screenshots of your settings or write them down. DO NOT restore a file with them, it could just put you right back where you are now with problems.
