RBR50 Dead? :(

[--mark--]

Hi all, I'm hoping someone can give me some advice on what appears to be a dead RBR50. I came home from work yesterday to compliants that "there's no internet". I have an Orbi mesh network, and an RBR50 at the heart of it. I noticed the satilites had a magenta status light, and when I got to the RBR50, it's status light was flashing white. I powered it off and on, and it came back flashing white. I've fully unplugged it for 5 mins and tried again, and it's just flashing white. I've gone through this multiple times with no success.

Next step I thought would be to reset to factory, so I've tried holding in the reset button, but nothing happens. I've held this (with much discomfort) for up to 2 minutes, and nothing happens. I can feel the button through the little whole press down, so I'm confident I'm doing it right, it just doesn't seem to do anything.

Throughout all of these steps, the power light on back of the RBR50 is solid green, and the status light on top just flashes white. I've even tried to use Tftpd64 to flash it, but the instructions say to click "put" when the power light flashes orange, which never happens.

The only thing I seem to be able to do to make the unit do anything other than green power light and flashing white status light, is to power it on while holding the reset button in. This results in the power light flashing red, and the status light flashing white.

Does anyone have any advice how I might be able to get my RBR50 up and running again?

Many thanks in advance!

[plemans]

I've gotten tftp to flash when its flashing white. 

You can also try nmrpflash. 

are you on windows? if so, follow this guide
https://kb.netgear.com/000059634/How-to-upload-firmware-to-a-NETGEAR-router-using-Windows-TFTP
just make sure you enable tftp
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/enable-tftp-windows-10

and here's a video walk through using a tftp client. Use the built in one for windows 10 though. the video is more of an example of how its done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9DLrLQrpaw

and if that doesn't work, you can try using nmrpflash
https://github.com/jclehner/nmrpflash

[Emrek]

Iam having the exact same problem, need help..

[Emrek]

I have tried that reset method but orbi is still blinking white.
Also called with customer service and they are telling me my device has hardware issues but doesn’t acknowledge the update broke my router.

[FURRYe38]

You might reach out to a forum moderator and see if there is anything they can help with:

@KevinLiT 

[Spazmonkey]

This mirrors the exact experience I had last week.

My thread is here.

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/RBR50-unresponsive-this-morning/td-p/2226577

In the end, I used a spare unit (rbr50v2) I had at my company.

Didn't get any support or even any acknowledgement. But it seems very odd, that other models are getting bricked due to firmware updates and we seem to have 3/4 of these rbr50's go in the last week.

[--mark--]

This is shocking that a firmware update is bricking people's routers. I've had a PM from a user asking for my personal details to escalate to support, but I'm waiting for some assurances that I'm not about to get scammed!

[Spazmonkey]

So last week, there were a lot of threads for 7xx and 8xx users, whose routers had been made unresponsive by a firmware update which Netgear pulled. An announcement in red was at the top of the forums about the issue.

A representative on here (Suzie?) contacted affected users and began to fix the issues. Not sure where those threads have gone now. but the admins and superusers should be aware of it. I thought it was a huge coincidence that after 3 years of faultless service, my router suddenly was in a state expecting a firmware.

Can someone escalate this please?

[KevinLiT]

Hi --mark--,

Please check you PM's. 

Best,

Kevin

Community Team

[qneill2020]

Hi Kevin

My RBR50 is dead blinking white this morning too. Happened while we were watching a movie last night. What should we do if we have this problem, try downgrading via TFTP? Where are links to the working firmware? How do we stop it from bricking itself again?

P.S. if you DM me the fix, I will summarize and put info here anyway, so kindly save me the time.

[FURRYe38]

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/New-RBR50-RBS50-Firmware-Version-2-7-4-24-Released/td-p/221345...

Can try TFTP and see:

https://kb.netgear.com/000059634/How-to-upload-firmware-to-a-NETGEAR-router-using-Windows-TFTP
Video walk through using a tftp client. Use the built in one for windows 10 though. the video is more of an example of how its done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9DLrLQrpaw
I had a problem on a Windows 10 PC where this didn't work to use TFTP, so I switched to a Windows 7 PC and the TFTP worked.
Mac TFTP: https://www.petenetlive.com/KB/Article/0001247

Try nmrpflash:
https://github.com/jclehner/nmrpflash

[qneill2020]

So my RBR50 powers on, begins blinking white and won't stop.

Connecting a known good ethernet cable to the "Internet" labeled port does not provide a link light (on the RJ45 port on the laptop) and Windows 10 says "Network cable unplugged", so as I suspected, neither TFTP nor nmrpflash can do anything.

I'm about to drive to Best Buy and buy a Linksys... change my mind.

[CrimpOn]

There is a brief window of time during the boot sequence when the Orbi unit will look for a TFTP connection. (not very long)  I once used the Windows64 version of TFTP and it took me six tries.  Sometimes I was "too soon". Sometimes I was "too late".  Once the unit has begun that "white flashing" business, that is definitely too late.

Fortunately, the TFTP transfer took before I exhausted my supply of swear words.

---

@qneill2020 wrote:

I'm about to drive to Best Buy and buy a Linksys... change my mind.

---

I dread the day when I am forced to replace my aging RBR50/RBS50/RBS40 system.  The more reviews I read, the less confident I am in picking a system with the right combination of features/performance/cost.  There are too many choices!

[CrimpOn]

Oh, and that doesn't count the number of times I got fumble fingered and TFTP64 had forgotten which file to transfer.  By the time I corrected that goof, my "window was past."

[steeliron2]

My unit did the same thing with the blinking white light on the router. We unplugged our unit because we were painting August 1st. When we plugged the unit back in we started having issues. If this is a known Software issue from Netgear, the company should stand behind this. I paid $500 for my mesh system, not to have to purchase a new router or system. It sounds like if I purchase a new router, I am going to have the same issues?
I've called Customer Service twice and wasn't satisfied with them. I am out of Warrenty, only 90 days! So they wanted you to sign up for their extended 1 year service. They said they KNEW what the problem was and would have me up and running. That tech, or person who is reading off a monitor who I couldn't understand, sent me to a higher level tech support who said she had to refer this to a higher level and they never responded and my case was closed after 5 days.
People have lives and don't have the time to get back.....my house is under construction and in addition to working over 40 hours/week, I am trying to get everything put back together, which was more important.
At the end of my first tech call she said is it ok if we can bill my credit card for the extended 1 year service. This infuriated me. I said absolutely not! You told me you would have me up and running which didn't happen.
Please advise! Should I go with a completely different company?

[CrimpOn]

Would you mind sharing the telephone number used to contact Netgear support?

Orbi products typically come with a one year warranty, but only 90 days of 'complimentary support'.  The process to request a product return is described here: https://kb.netgear.com/1162/How-do-I-request-a-Return-Material-Authorization-RMA-for-my-NETGEAR-prod... 

[qneill2020]

My Orbi RBR50 and the satellite are sitting in the outgoing pile, unplugged. After 2 years of running good enough (had issues with the satellite and base swapping connections, and the occasional outage) - it bricked itself with a software update.

I tried factory resetting and TFTP and nmrpflash but it’s not even initialising the network stack - no link light.

I thought about cracking it open and connecting with the serial port and maybe doing a manual flash update. Yes I have the skills and know how to do that, but you know what? I’m busy, I have kids, and I have a brand new Ubiquiti AMPLIFI that’s running great.

Has there been an announcement, post, or update published that addresses this issue? Just curious at this point. Will be selling these on eBay if I can get anything for them.