Posted: Sat May 18, 2019 16:55 Post subject: Can't flash DD-WRT on Netgear R7800
Hi all,
Today I got myself a Netgear Nighthawk R7800. Of course the first thing I tried is to flash a custom firmware. I downloaded the Kong release and flashed "R7800-factory-to-ddwrt.img" from the stock Netgear UI.
The flashing all goes well, until my router goes for the reboot. From that moment the powerled is orange, the LAN1 port is blinking (its where my device is connected to), after a while all the four LAN ports turn white and then the router seems to reboot again to repeat the process.
At first I thought I bricked my router, fortunately I can hold the reset button, wait for my power led to blink white and flash the stock firmware back through TFTP.
I also tried OpenWRT, but exactly the same thing is happening with that firmware.
Unfortunately I'm not able to find anyone with such issues, hence I started my topic here.
Hopefully someone is known with this issue and knows what I'm doing wrong.
I also tried flashing the "R7800-factory-to-ddwrt.img" file through TFTP but without any success.
To get TFTP to work, power off, push reset button and hold down, let the R7800 boot up while holding down the reset. and after about 15-20 seconds the pwr light will go from orange to white-release reset button now. Then you can push the new img file. _________________ FORUM RULES
Unfortunately the router is in my new house, I'm not there all the time so it has taken a while before I was able to try your method.
I held down the reset button and turned the power back on (at the same time) until I was in recovery mode to flash through TFTP. Unfortunately this doesn't work either. The IMG file gets transfered, the router reboots and then is just stuck.
The even more strange thing is; I configured my router on the stock firmware to get internet to work and all (had to configure VLAN and such). These settings were all still there after putting back the original firmware.
Joined: 21 Jan 2017 Posts: 1783 Location: Illinois Moderator
Posted: Tue May 21, 2019 18:21 Post subject:
PaulusE wrote:
Unfortunately the router is in my new house, I'm not there all the time so it has taken a while before I was able to try your method.
I held down the reset button and turned the power back on (at the same time) until I was in recovery mode to flash through TFTP. Unfortunately this doesn't work either. The IMG file gets transfered, the router reboots and then is just stuck.
The even more strange thing is; I configured my router on the stock firmware to get internet to work and all (had to configure VLAN and such). These settings were all still there after putting back the original firmware.
I doubt thats going to do anything as I tried to flash DD-WRT already as soon as the router came out of the box. I only clicked through the "setup" and from there I went through the progress of failure while trying to flash my firmware.
Can it be that I have a somewhat newer model that it's not working how its supposed to be working for me?
Was going to suggest before trying to flash anything, to update the stock firmware to its latest version, then proceed from there to flash DD-WRT.
I know... could sound stupid, but as a middle step to bypass the recurrent issue was something that came to my mind.
Glad to know you managed to get another device, and on the new one, everything went well
that's something I had tried already, in order to get back to the stock firmware after I tried flashing it I had to update it with the latest firmware from the netgear website. thanks for the thoughts though
thanks for the thoughts though