Router looses its settings

[Seamaster]

Probably a stupid question, but my netgear router keeps on loosing its settings.
I am with AOL, and normally I get around the problem by doing a system restore but today I could not and had to get help to manually reset the router.
It only seams to happen if I spend time on the auto trader site.
Could I be picking something from this site?
I have panda cloud antivirus at present.

 

[shugie]

Probably a stupid question, but my netgear router keeps on loosing its settings.
I am with AOL, and normally I get around the problem by doing a system restore but today I could not and had to get help to manually reset the router.
It only seams to happen if I spend time on the auto trader site.
Could I be picking something from this site?
I have panda cloud antivirus at present.

I've not encountered a virus that can attack a netgear router, I'd be more inclined to think it had some sort of problem, but the setup information should be stored in non-volatile memory that would survive a power failure. I'd be inclined to try another router to see if you can reproduce the problem.

 

[Dave Ett]

I have a netgear router too, and it's never forgotten its settings. How old is it? COuld be something within that's dying - I dunno if they use wee batteries like a motherboard does?

 

[Fanum]

Do you mean the router is losing its settings or the PC?
(you've confused me by saying that a system restore has helped previously......a system restore wouldn't touch the router's settings, just those that refer to the router inside the PC itself)

 

[Seamaster]

Do you mean the router is losing its settings or the PC?
(you've confused me by saying that a system restore has helped previously......a system restore wouldn't touch the router's settings, just those that refer to the router inside the PC itself)

Your confused, I live my life in a constant state of confusion, everything is a blur.

I took my pc to my local only just helpful computer shop and they connected it up to there router and all was fine, my pc seamed to gain internet access as soon as it was plugged in. They gave me a telephone number for a home visit computer repair person, I chose to ring aol up and they talked me through re setting the router. Other than that, this is the extent of my knowledge.

The router is about 5 years old.

 

[Fanum]

Your confused, I live my life in a constant state of confusion, everything is a blur.

I took my pc to my local only just helpful computer shop and they connected it up to there router and all was fine, my pc seamed to gain internet access as soon as it was plugged in. They gave me a telephone number for a home visit computer repair person, I chose to ring aol up and they talked me through re setting the router. Other than that, this is the extent of my knowledge.

The router is about 5 years old.

Ok, so could you tell us what happens when this problem occurs?
Do you try and connect to the interweb and it tells you there's no connection found?
Are the lights (assuming there are any) on the router still showing the same colours as they do when you are connected properly or is there something different going on?


It may be something as simple to fix as rebooting the router (unplug from mains , wait 30 secs, replug is simplest) and restarting windows....a 'system restore' is quite a dramatic step to take with the possibilities for losing other stuff you've done.

 

[Steve]

I presume you mean a system "reset" on the router, rather than a "system restore"?

Same thing happened with my Netgear router a couple of years ago.

Basically, it's fecked. Give it another month or so and even the system reset will fail to work.

Buy another router.



Oh, and dump AOHell while you're at it.

 

[Seamaster]

I tried to connect to the internet and there was no connection found, all the lights were on the router as normal, I went into my network connections, my high speed internet / LAN was connected.
I went into the XP modem trouble shooter, and it said "No dns servers", dns failure ( I printed of six pages of fault diagnostics ) none of the trouble shooting worked.
I rang AOL, they told me to do the following:
Open Internet explorer
Type in a number into the browser starting with 192. , looks like my IP address.
I entered the Netgear web page
I changed the ADSL settings to LLC-BASED; VPI 0 and VCI 38 (dont know what the old numbers were)
I changed the encapsulation to PPP over ethernet
I typed in my Login and password and gained internet access ( after a few attempts)

All of the above does not mean anything to me!

 

[Fanum]

I tried to connect to the internet and there was no connection found, all the lights were on the router as normal, I went into my network connections, my high speed internet / LAN was connected.
I went into the XP modem trouble shooter, and it said "No dns servers", dns failure ( I printed of six pages of fault diagnostics ) none of the trouble shooting worked.
I rang AOL, they told me to do the following:
Open Internet explorer
Type in a number into the browser starting with 192. , looks like my IP address.
I entered the Netgear web page
I changed the ADSL settings to LLC-BASED; VPI 0 and VCI 38 (dont know what the old numbers were)
I changed the encapsulation to PPP over ethernet
I typed in my Login and password and gained internet access ( after a few attempts)

All of the above does not mean anything to me!

The number ' beginning 192' would probably be 192.168.2.1 (or 1.1) which is the IP address of the router, so yes, your PC was talking to the router and it does sound like (from the rest of what you just posted) that it is the router not the PC.......Steve's probably right and you probably do need another one

 

[Seamaster]

Thanks for the help
Regards

 

[Fanum]

Look on the bright side....a new router is likely to be faster, more secure and better all round, and they've fallen in price a lot as well

If you haven't yet, it's also a good moment to go wifi with it......

 

[cookie]

switch to a decent isp and get a new router free.

two birds, one stone