Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2020 2:11 Post subject: [SOLVED] Best practices for major upgrade on WNDR4300?
I'm running a Netgear WNDR4300 with an ancient build - 21061. It's been working fine for (obviously) many years, but I figured it was past time to upgrade. This is the primary router for our simple home network. I don't actually need any new capabilities at this time.
Given the number of intervening builds, what are the best practices for the upgrade?
- Should I do a "Factory Defaults" from the Administration Tab before I upgrade?
- Is there any reason to upgrade to some intermediate build before upgrading to a recent build?
- Which of the recent builds is appropriate as relatively stable? I didn't turn up any obvious candidates from reading the "New Build" messages
Thanks!
Dan
Last edited by danbr on Sat Dec 05, 2020 16:31; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 21 Jan 2017 Posts: 1783 Location: Illinois Moderator
Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2020 2:54 Post subject:
since your coming from such an acient build, I would highly recommend doing a factory reset on the old build, install the new build, and factory reset again.... for sure there will be some nvram mappings that shift and will cause issues if you don't perform factory resets...
doing the factory reset on the old will assure nothing strange lingers over to the new build. the factory reset on the new build will kill all gremlins...
no feeding a gremlin past midnight, please! _________________ FORUM RULES
Joined: 21 Jan 2017 Posts: 1783 Location: Illinois Moderator
Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2020 13:11 Post subject:
You can try 44715 first and see my signature for the WiFi settings. That's a really old router and you may encounter some issues with wifi speed issues. I have a similar old tp-link at my aunt's house running a build from last year. You can try that build 2nd. 44715 is a solid build to try and test first. You can stress test using iperf on two computers. Notes on that in my signature, too. _________________ FORUM RULES
Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2020 14:13 Post subject: Re: Best practices for major upgrade on WNDR4300?
Upgrade with WebUI shouldn't work. The firmware signature was changed from tp-link to dd-wrt around build r33375 by BS.
Be careful. I would prefer a revert to stock and after that factory to dd-wrt from a recent build because it's more secure. I would go with msoengineers recommendation to go back to factory, reset settings before every flash step, do NOT import any saved settings from dd-wrt, manually recreate every setting you need.
1. Reset to factory defaults (still running 21061)
2. Flash from the WebGUI using 44715 - I did this before I saw the message from @servicetech - just lucky I guess!!
3. Reset to factory defaults AGAIN.
4. Manually install all my settings (which didn't take long except for my DHCP statics
