RBR50 admin password reset problem

[Firebird56]

Hopefully somebody will be able to help me here.

I had an RBR50 and one satellite and had been working perfectly fine for years. Could access the admin system through a web browser or via the Orbi app.

A few weeks ago the RBR50 kept failing. It was dropping all connections both wifi and hardwired and only rebooting the RBR50 enabled it to return to service, until the next drop.Things like that don't repair themselves, so due to its age a replacement seemed appropriate.

So during a time that the internet was up and searched a found a deal on Amazon for a new RBR50 and as a bonus another satellite was included as well.

OK forward to today when I had time to swap the systems over.

The first thing I made sure of was that I took a backup of the settings to ease things.

Then I unplugged the old RBR50 and plugged in the new one. I kept the original satellite in place.

Powered up and logged in to 192.168.1.1 and then selected no phone followed by selecting load saved settings.

Usual whirring for a few minutes followed by internet access. Success! Everything looked as it was.

I then tried to log back in to the Orbi app on my tablet and phone but it came to a page asking for the Network admin password. Which I put in and it rejected it saying that it was wrong. Except that it wasn't as I was logged in via the browser.

I read one issue that was resolved by resetting the password from the admin screen and then rebooting the router. Then hit the problem that the password reset failed as it said that the old password was wrong! What? I was logged in using the password.

Any ideas on how to overcome the password reset issue and the issue with the apps?

For the sake of completeness and to avoid wasting valuable time i should mention that yes I did try a hardware reset, with the same results and not only did I clear out the data and cache from the android apps but also uninstalled them completely.

I seem to be stuck here. Any help would be appreciated.

[Firebird56 · Accepted solution]

Thanks to all that responded. The problem is resolved.

The issue was as plemans said a corrupted saved file. I still don't understand how I could access 192.168.1.1 through a browser and it accept the password though, but hey that is the support analyst in me.

In case this helps anybody else, this is what I did to recover.

Firstly, I took screen dumps of each page of the admin index using lightscreen portable. Luckily the router was just failing rather than failed.

I was about to start again from scratch when i actually found the backup I took immediately after I installed the first RBR50 5 years ago. This greatly reduced the time to set everything back up as it was on the old router. Still a pain to sort out the IPs but that was to be expected.

Checked the mobile devices and I was able to log in to the Orbi app successfully. So everything was fine, or so I thought.

Everything seemed to be fine except that I couldn't access my Serviio server from any devices. I tried all sorts including completely deleting and re-installing Serviio. No good.

I plugged the old RBR50 back in to see if I missed something but it didn't work there either.

Checked the ports that should be forwarded for Serviio, no difference.

This lead me to the Windows firewall on my PC.

IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP

When looking at opening the ports in the Firewall I found that they were open on the Private network. When checking the network in Windows 11 I found that changing the router altered the network from PRIVATE to PUBLIC!

Why the hell it should do that I have no idea but manually altering it back to PRIVATE in the Network and internet settings page on the PC. Solved it.

So my tip is ensure that you check that the network connection remains the same after swapping one Router out for another.

[plemans]

You reinstalled using your backup? (based on your "made a backup to ease..." statement)

If so, factory reset and reinstall but don't use a backup. Maybe something in your settings was corrupt and thats what was causing your issues. 

[Firebird56]

Firstly thanks for replying.

OK. What you are saying makes sense, but what I don't understand is why it is happening as it is.

What i mean is that if the admin password was corrupted in the file, how comes I can logon via  a browser? For a corruption I would expect no access at all.

I will look to see if I can reset everything up again manually, which will be a complete pain and take a hell of a long time.

[plemans]

If your orbi app is on a mac/ios and uses icloud relay or private mac/ip address, you can try disabling that first. I've seen that cause issues

[Firebird56]

Thanks for that suggestion but the PC is Windows and the devices are Android, so i can't blame Apple unfortunately.

[plemans]

If you do factory reset, you can always do a very simple install and see if it works on both app/browser and if it doesn't then just use your backup. If it does, you know something in the backup is causing issues

[Firebird56 · Accepted solution]

Thanks to all that responded. The problem is resolved.

The issue was as plemans said a corrupted saved file. I still don't understand how I could access 192.168.1.1 through a browser and it accept the password though, but hey that is the support analyst in me.

In case this helps anybody else, this is what I did to recover.

Firstly, I took screen dumps of each page of the admin index using lightscreen portable. Luckily the router was just failing rather than failed.

I was about to start again from scratch when i actually found the backup I took immediately after I installed the first RBR50 5 years ago. This greatly reduced the time to set everything back up as it was on the old router. Still a pain to sort out the IPs but that was to be expected.

Checked the mobile devices and I was able to log in to the Orbi app successfully. So everything was fine, or so I thought.

Everything seemed to be fine except that I couldn't access my Serviio server from any devices. I tried all sorts including completely deleting and re-installing Serviio. No good.

I plugged the old RBR50 back in to see if I missed something but it didn't work there either.

Checked the ports that should be forwarded for Serviio, no difference.

This lead me to the Windows firewall on my PC.

IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP

When looking at opening the ports in the Firewall I found that they were open on the Private network. When checking the network in Windows 11 I found that changing the router altered the network from PRIVATE to PUBLIC!

Why the hell it should do that I have no idea but manually altering it back to PRIVATE in the Network and internet settings page on the PC. Solved it.

So my tip is ensure that you check that the network connection remains the same after swapping one Router out for another.

[plemans]

Glad you got it working!

You might mark it solved so others aren't still trying to fix it. 

The private/public has been an issue before with windows detecting a new connection as it defaults to public connection to try to protect the user.

You might even try reinstalling the firmware on your old system. Maybe it was a corrupt setting causing instabilities with it. 

[Firebird56]

Thanks. Marked as closed as suggested.

[Mikey94025]

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@Firebird56 wrote:

IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP

When looking at opening the ports in the Firewall I found that they were open on the Private network. When checking the network in Windows 11 I found that changing the router altered the network from PRIVATE to PUBLIC!

Why the hell it should do that I have no idea but manually altering it back to PRIVATE in the Network and internet settings page on the PC. Solved it.

---

This occurs because to Windows, even though you used the same SSID as before, there are different internal identifiers and so Windows treats it as a different wireless network and defaults it to Public.

[Firebird56]

Thanks for explanation as to why.

What strikes me as being odd is that a company that is making a big thing about Windows 11 being about safety and security should default to a public network.

I realise that this is not the place for such a debate however.

[plemans]

That is actually the security measure. when its marked as a public network, network discovery features are disabled. 

https://www.howtogeek.com/245982/whats-the-difference-between-private-and-public-networks-in-windows...