Help! Netgear DG834PN. I am currently using a modem at 48k

PaulProteus · 3 Apr 2009 at 20:41

Hello guys,

Tonight I was trying to insert my new laptop MAC number into my Netgear DG834PH Wireless router. I have had this one for more than three years and it has been working seamlessly till this very evening.

It happened that I had forgotten the password (had not used it since the last firmware upgrade) and had to go back to factory settings. Found a cocktail stick and kept it for about 10 seconds.

One light turned orange (I thought it was the Test one, the small tick) but with a hindsight it might have been the one that is often used as a symbol for infinity in Math.

After that I have tried to recover it using an old firmware but it would not see a device during the process.

When switched on the router can be seen by my two laptops but I cannot connect to it by using the standard 192.168.0.1 in the address line in my browser. The Ethernet card is connected to the router and still I cannot connect to the router.

My feeling (I do not want to believe it though) is that I have just bricked my router as I have obviously not waited the 10 seconds and the blinking of the Test light.

Can anyone advice me whether the situation is hopeless and whether I have to start looking for a new router?

I am currently using my laptop modem and if anyone of you (I do not think so) uses anything near 48kbits/sec they will understand why I am so desperate for getting back to my 5 Mbit/s.

I realise that it is Friday night and not many people would be around but I am still hopeful.

Thank you in advance!

Cheers,
Paul

rz30 · 3 Apr 2009 at 21:00

Couple of things you can try,

1) try and ping the router from start/run/cmd ping 192.168.0.1 and also try ping 192.168.1.1
2) Check your own ip address start/run/cmd ipconfig /all and post back here what it is.
3) try and connect using an ethernet cable to a LAN port on the router, disable wireless first although i think ethernet overrides wireless anyway.

PaulProteus · 3 Apr 2009 at 21:22

rz30 said:
Couple of things you can try,

1) try and ping the router from start/run/cmd ping 192.168.0.1 and also try ping 192.168.1.1
2) Check your own ip address start/run/cmd ipconfig /all and post back here what it is.
3) try and connect using an ethernet cable to a LAN port on the router, disable wireless first although i think ethernet overrides wireless anyway.

I have tried both but the message was: destination is unreachable.

Looks like I have a brick now.

Is there anything else before I totally write it off?

PaulProteus · 4 Apr 2009 at 16:05

I was talking to the O2 representatives for over an hour (it is nice that it is 0800 number). After not being able to use my faithful Netgear I turned to the SpeedTouch (aka Thompson ST 122) modem. I had not used it since I got him and yesterday I realised again why. It would start up stay connected for a couple of minutes and would restart on its own. Very reproducibly (irritating) ever two-three minutes. It happened many times during my phone calls and they ended up sending me a new one (should arrive on Tuesday).

This morning (as you can imagine) I had this bad feeling when something is not right.

I turned my attention to the Netgear router again as it was flashing this blue LEDs and all of a sudden I could ping it again via LAN connection. At this point I realised that I might use my laptop and not my desktop. Bingo!

It worked, I was able to enter the router menu and re-set all necessary lines.

I am back on the Internet. It was a very embarassing and annoying exprience. This morning I almost went to PCWorld to buy a new router till Tuesday.

Potentially the compensation would be that I will have a second (hopefully working) router from O2 (I was told that they do not ship the black box anymore). It will most likely be locked the same way the SpeedTouch is but I am keen now to see if I could do something to the SpeedTouch (a firmware upgrade could be my first step).

In this connection, can anyone lety me know if there were any firmware upgrades for it and if yes, has any one tried to unlock O2 SpeedTouch (should be one of V.6)

Cheers,
Paul