Wireless router problem

[Guest richard]

A friend of mine has got a Netgear DG834G wireless router that keeps losing its wireless settings every couple of days. I have been up several times to reconfigure it for him but for some reason the settings just seem to change. At first I put it down to him playing with the settings so I changed to router password to stop him getting into it but it has continued to happen. the router is running the latest firmware and if you use a network cable to connect to it it works great its just the wireless side of things.

[strawberry]

is he using the reset button?, maybe someone's hacking it?. not sure if a power cut would effect it?

[Geoff]

Yeah, there's usually some magic button press that'll reset the router back to factory defaults.

 

Failing that, if he's turning it off maybe the CMOS battery is duff?

[tom_newton]

Is it overheating perhaps?

 

Either way, i'd vote to take it back from whence it came and demand a replacement. TBH, the price of these things, dodgy hardware is always my 1st thought (right after dodgy users, if i'm honest)

[Guest richard]

The router was new and sent by AOL as part of his broadband package. I have 2 set back to factory defaults and reconfigured it. He's not turning it off as I have said that it is better to leave it on all the time as that is the whole point of using a router as he originally wanted to turn it off when he wasn't using it.

 

My first thought was that it had been hacked as it was set with the default password but since his problems began I have changed the password 3 times the last being a 12 character random alpha-numeric code

 

As for the overheating I don't think it is that as all other aspects of the router are fine.

[Geoff]

Also might be firmware problem. Try flashing it with the latest offical firmware.

 

Currently OpenWRT support is Work In Progress, so no help there yet.

 

http://wiki.openwrt.org/AR7Port

[Guest richard]

I have already flashed it to the latest firmware geoff but it still keeps loosing its wireless settings

[CyberNerd]

This may be obvious but some routers require you to find the 'save settings' button. just changing the settings works until a reboot , but in order for it to be saved to flash you might need to tell it to save. I'm not being patronising - I got caught out by this before - router would work fine for a few days, then reboot itself (I assumed) then break. IIRC it was a dlink with a particularly non-intuative web interface (the save was hidden deep in the gui) that caught me.

[craiglay]

I believe the Netgear DG834 series has a power supply problem that may cause issues like this. I occasionally used to find my router in a reboot cycle (mine wont recync properly until powered down although other functions were ok) which I later found was mains voltage was dropping too low. Even putting it on a UPS (Belkin Gold) didn't solve the problem and it was now rebooting on a mains transfer. However I could trace power dips.

 

Anyway, I completely solved this by cutting the power cord and wiring in a couple of large capacitors. Another solution may be to buy a REGULATED 1AMP 12V mains adaptor.

 

Just an Idea

 

Craig

[tom_newton]

@Cybernerd - i have seen this too, but it was a DLink, or one of the Dlink knock-offs (ADD-on being a particularly horrid example of the breed). Did not think netgears interface was quite that toss!

[Joedetic]

I seem to remember someone telling me in the past (or reading it somewhere) that his netgear router had a habit of overheating so he had to put a timer switch in so that it forced it off for 10 minutes every day.

 

But i dont know that that would help in this case. Have you got the settings backed up to a file so that your mate can just logon and restore them if you teach him.

 

Not a permanent solution by any means, but a temporary work around until you find something more permanent.