× Introducing the Orbi 970 Series Mesh System with WiFi 7 technology. For more information visit the NETGEAR Press Room.
Orbi WiFi 7 RBE973
Reply

RAX80 Can't Save Settings Changes

kmerenda1
Star

RAX80 Can't Save Settings Changes

My Nighthawk RAX80 has a strange problem.  It was working fine before, but now I am unable to save any of the changes I make in the router settings.  The settings page works fine (no errors), but any changes I make are reverted back after the router is restarted.  This is particularly problematic because many of the changes trigger an restart.

 

I never noticed this issue before firmware 1.0.1.62_1.0.26 so I suspect its a bug.  

 

Here is the long version of the story....

 

I was trying to disable port aggregation last nigt, and each time I would change that setting, the router would restart.  After restart, I would notice that port aggregation was still turned on.  I tried this a few times, before deciding to use the router settings page to perform a wipe (restore factory settings).  This wipe worked correctly, and I was then taken through the normal setup wizard:  set admin password, check for firmware updates, register product.  After the wizard finished, I would go in the router settings and change the LAN settings to use a 10.0.1.1 for the router IP and set my DHCP range to 10.0.1.100 - 10.0.1.199.  After I would make this change, the reouter would automatically restart, but after restart all my changes were lost, including those I made in the setup wizard.  The router would remain on a 192.168.1.0/24 subnet and I would have to do the initial setup wizard again.

 

I repeated this process with Google Chrome on macOS Catalina, Safari on macOS Catalina, Google Chrome on macOS Mojave, Chromium on Linux, and even tried the Nighthawk app on iOS 13.  No matter what I tried, the changes would be lost after reboot.  I even downloaded the firmware again from Netgear's website and manually reloaded it via the web interface, but still no change.

 

I called Netgear support (I had 5 days left on my warranty - lucky me), and they had me perform a hard reset using the reset button on the router, but this didn't help either.  Netgear support believes its a bug in the firmware, and they are sending a replacement unit.

 

FYI - the netgear replacement process sucks.  They want me to send my old router in first then wait a few weeks for a replacement.  If I want to get the replacement first, then send the broken one, I have to pay $17-$30 USD (depending on shipping).  I would have gladly given then a CC for colateral, but its sucks that I have to pay for shipping because I don't want to be completely without a router.

 

Anyway, I'm posting this because I couldn't find any similar reports of this particular issue.  I hope this helps someone.

Model: RAX80|Nighthawk AX8 8-Stream WiFi Router
Message 1 of 2
robmattox
Initiate

Re: RAX80 Can't Save Settings Changes

This is indeed a bug as I have a similar issue with RAX80 settings changes not being retained after restarting the router. This symptom appears to have started around firmware v1.0.1.62_x.x.xx and it's still not fixed as of v1.0.1.64_1.0.27.

 

To work around a Netgear DHCP Reservation limit issue, I recently decided to move the DHCP services for my LAN off the RAX80 and to a different server, I had several DHCP Reservations configured on the RAX80 so I deleted all those before unchecking "Use Router as a DHCP Server" to disable DHCP on the router. I saved the settings by hitting the "Apply" button and waited for the progress bar to finish. After a subsequent (graceful) router reboot, I discovered that the DHCP server was re-enabled on the router and all the reservations that I previously deleted were back again.

 

Doesn't seem to matter what order I make changes or how many I make at a time, all DHCP-related settings changes are now reverted back after every router reboot. Unfortunately, it seems I'll have to reapply all new settings changes after every reboot until Netgear releases a bug fix in some future firmware release.

Model: RAX80|Nighthawk AX8 8-Stream WiFi Router
Message 2 of 2
Top Contributors
Discussion stats
  • 1 reply
  • 2213 views
  • 7 kudos
  • 2 in conversation
Announcements

Orbi WiFi 7