Solved AX88U bought in China came with Merlin Pre-installed. Is it dodgy?

[Lowen_Beehold]

Hey lads. Been living in China for a good few years running astrill off the app but have found it to be dropping connection more regularly recently. Decided to bite the bullet and get a router that I can run a VPN off. Have a couple of mates who already did it and their connection seldom drops. Anywho I did my research and landed on the RT AX88U. Ordered one on Taobao and it arrived today. Was excited to get it set up but when I clicked on the open vpn setting I was surprised to find a version of merlin already installed. It says version 388.2_2. I started looking around the different functions and got a bit spooked when I saw the system log. Although I have always had an appreciation for coding my dyslexic brain could never wrap its head around it. I did a bit of google-fu on some of the terms I saw in the log but couldn't really figure out if they were good things or bad things. I mean on paper the words "DYING GASP" sound like a pretty bad thing but when I looked it up it seemed to be a pretty normal function. So between this and noticing that half the ram seemed to be in use just from looking at the menu, I decided to pull the plug and seek more expert advice.

So lads, give it to me straight. Do I have to change all my passwords and bank account details? I can drop the system log if it would be helpful identifying the authenticity of the firmware.

 

[ColinTaylor]

If it was meant to be a new router then it's well dodgy. Asus never ships routers with firmware other than their own. If however this was bought as a "used" item then it's possible the previous owner simply installed the Merlin firmware, like many of us here do. Even so I would immediately do a hard reset on it, flash the firmware of your choice and then do another hard reset.

 

[Lowen_Beehold]

They said it was used as a display model so not new. Still had most of its cling on the package. Cheers for the advice fella. I will get to looking for tutorials on hard reset and flashing merlin. Out of curiosity, why would you do a second hard reset after flashing the firmware?

 

[ColinTaylor]

They said it was used as a display model so not new. Still had most of its cling on the package. Cheers for the advice fella. I will get to looking for tutorials on hard reset and flashing merlin. Out of curiosity, why would you do a second hard reset after flashing the firmware?

You do a factory reset after flashing a different firmware to remove any obsolete/incorrect/invalid settings from the previous firmware interfering with the new firmware's settings. The first hard factory reset is an attempt to remove any malware that may be currently present on the router that may interfere with you installing the replacement firmware.

[Wireless Router] ASUS router Hard Factory Reset - Method 2 | Official Support | ASUS Global

 

[Lowen_Beehold]

I did a hard reset by holding the wps button while powering on, i did a factory reset in asus firmware then i also did a factory reset in the dodgy merlin firmware. Still the merlin firmware remains. Should I flash the latest version of Merlin over the top of this one? or will that brick the router?

 

[ColinTaylor]

Doing a factory reset doesn't remove the current firmware. You need to install the new firmware over the top of the old one.

 

[Lowen_Beehold]

Cheers geeza. We are looking all good on this end now! Just got to get astill running on the bugger and I'm done. Thanks for your help!