Firmware upgrades have always been a risky business, due to the ease of ‘bricking’ your device. Basically a failure to complete the upload or upload of a firmware file can result in a near useless device which can often be unrepairable.
However, if you are lucky (as I have been) there are steps you can take in order to try and recover the original EEPROM and re upload the latest firmware version.
If you have a DG834PN which has the ‘Power’ and ‘Tick’ light flashing on and off, then following the steps below may just bring it back to life!
Follow each step carefully, ensuring you select the correct options from the list!
- Connect your DG834PN to a power outlet.
- Connect a SINGLE pc* to the DG834PN using an RJ45(Network) cable. (Unplug any other devices as a precaution)
- Download the Netgear Recovery Utility.
- Unzip the utility to a new folder.
- Download the latest available from the Netgear Support Site. (See the downloads tab)
- Unzip the firmware file, and copy it into the same folder as the utility
- Double click the UpgradeWizard.exe
- Click Next, now select the network adapter that your Netgear DG834PN is connected to, Click Next again
- Ensure there is only one device in the list (this should be your DG834PN) highlight it and click Next
- Ensure the MAC address matches the one on the bottom of your router and click Next
- Now, click the Update button.
The UpgradeWizard will perform several steps on your router, the first one may take some time and during this part the progress bar will not move. Wait patiently for this to complete. Once done the router should reboot it’s self and your PC will obtain a new IP address.
You should now find the router has returned to it’s previous state, and should be working as expected!
* The PC you connect needs to be a Windows XP Service Pack 2 PC or higher. If you experience issues with the recovery utility, attempt the recovery on another XP PC. (I had to try two) Should you want to do this from a Mac, you will need to boot using bootcamp first of all.
If you still experience issues with the repair, please use the Contact Me page, get in touch and we can arrange shipping the router, I will then attempt the repair for you.