Yesterday evening I was experiencing some difficulty with stable conections to Google Chromecast 3 units that I was trying to set up in our basement rec room and guest bedroom. After giving up on the ChromeCasts, I decided to go ahead and update the firmware on our MR60 router. I started the update through the iPhone app, and after some delay the app informed me that the update had failed. I tried to apply the update to version 1.1.6.122 (the latest) three more times without success. Finally I opted to 'Skip' the update in the iPhone app, but our WiFi was already locked up. I cycled the power on the router, but when it came back up I got the 'blinking LED' which Netgear describes as an indication of corrupted firmware.
I found a note on the NetGear site for manually reloading firmware onto the MR60 by ethernet connection. I set up an ethernet connection to the router and connected to it with a TFTP application on my MacBook Pro. After some experimentation, I was able to get firmware updates to proceed, although slowly, on the MR60. However, the firmware gets to about 60% of reloading onto the MR60 and then the upload stops, due to the MR60 ceasing to respond. I tried resetting the router two more times and restarting ethernet upload of the 1.1.6.122 firmware two more times, with the same result; the reload of firmware stops a little over halfway through the process and the router stops responding. I have tried using an earlier firmware version (1.1.6.122) with the same result. I am beginning to suspect that the router is toast, and the failures of firmware reloading are due to a hardware failure. This router is only about 13 months old and it has been protected from voltage surges on both power and data, following a freak voltage surge in December 2020 on our cable internet provider's system which took out the MR60's predecessor.
Is there anything else that I can do here to try to resuccitate this router? My wife works from home and we need this wifi system to work for our employment, the Ring security system, and several other 'smart' devices scattered around our house. So far as I could tell, everything was working OK until I tried to update the firmware on the MR60, after which it appears to have been bricked! I am giving serious thought to dumping Netgear permanently over this incident and switching to a similar system from Eero.
A lof of router issues are generic and can be asked, and answered, anywhere, but in this case we are talking about a hardware specific issue.
You might get more help, and find earlier questions and answers specific to your device, in the appropriate section for your hardware. That's probably here:
