RT-AC86U Upgrade to 384.17 Fails

[allknowingeye]

I have an ASUS RT-AC86U which is running 384.13. I tried upgrading to 384.17 and the router became non-responsive to connections. Stopped providing DHCP addresses. The Global light remained red and the rest of the lights were flashing white while the power light remained solid white. I tried factory reset but it had no impact.

I obtained the Firmware rescue utility, which worked ok, and reapplied the 384.17 but again it made no difference, and reset and reboots still left in an useless state.

So I used the Firmware rescue utility to restore 384.13 and everything was once again ok and operative.

Is there some kind of special procedure to go from 384.13 to 384.17? I saw nothing in the notes.

 

[bbunge]

I have an ASUS RT-AC86U which is running 384.13. I tried upgrading to 384.17 and the router became non-responsive to connections. Stopped providing DHCP addresses. The Global light remained red and the rest of the lights were flashing white while the power light remained solid white. I tried factory reset but it had no impact.

I obtained the Firmware rescue utility, which worked ok, and reapplied the 384.17 but again it made no difference, and reset and reboots still left in an useless state.

So I used the Firmware rescue utility to restore 384.13 and everything was once again ok and operative.

Is there some kind of special procedure to go from 384.13 to 384.17? I saw nothing in the notes.

Try Asus 384_81858. Best firmware so far for the AC86U

 

[allknowingeye]

Try Asus 384_81858. Best firmware so far for the AC86U

Not an option. I require some of the VPN routing features in Merlin not available in the standard load.

 

[JJohnson1988]

Is the flash to 384.17 completely successful? Or do you get stuck in the middle of the flash, or fail outright?

The reason I'm asking is because the last few firmwares on the AC86U for me always fail to flash. This is due to the router running out of free memory, so first I have to do something like unmount my USB drive and disable AiProtection. Only then am I able to complete a flash.

Is this relevant/helpful to you?

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

 

[Sanna1967]

Disconnect the usb devices from the router, reboot to free up ram and try again.
There is also version 384.18_alpha1 which works very well (Except a small problem with the Wireless log page for the moment )
* Merged GPL + SDK 384_81846 (RT-AC86U) (code is almost identical to 385_20490)
* Merged RT-AC86U binary blobs from 384_81846

 

[allknowingeye]

Is the flash to 384.17 completely successful? Or do you get stuck in the middle of the flash, or fail outright?

The reason I'm asking is because the last few firmwares on the AC86U for me always fail to flash. This is due to the router running out of free memory, so first I have to do something like unmount my USB drive and disable AiProtection. Only then am I able to complete a flash.

Is this relevant/helpful to you?

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

The flash appears to be successful but it is non responsive but the lights are flashing away but the global light is red and power is solid white.

 

[allknowingeye]

Disconnect the usb devices from the router, reboot to free up ram and try again.
There is also version 384.18_alpha1 which works very well (Except a small problem with the Wireless log page for the moment )
* Merged GPL + SDK 384_81846 (RT-AC86U) (code is almost identical to 385_20490)
* Merged RT-AC86U binary blobs from 384_81846

I have no usb devices connected.

 

[allknowingeye]

I do note that my ram usage under normal operation is sitting at 353MB out of 512MB with AI Protection Enabled, and 280MB out of 512MB with it disabled. I tried also disabling the VPN client but that did not free any additional memory.

 

[Daybreak]

Start back at the basics.
With your current setup, reset router to default settings, make minimal changes, upload latest firmware wired connection, also, re download latest firmware again to make sure its not screwed up.

 

[MarkyPancake]

That's strange. I updated my AC86U from 384.12 to 384.17 a few days ago via its admin pages without any issues.

I also updated my AC68U to 384.17 from a really old build, I think it was on 380.69, as it's been in a box for a few years now and I decided to try Asus' AiMesh for some extra coverage.

 

[allknowingeye]

I am going to try the upgrade again with AI Protection Turned off to free up a bunch of memory. If not a factory reset first and then the upgrade. I would rather not do that because I have nearly a hundred settings in the router to handle my network, and I'd rather not have to reenter everything.

 

[Deldarius]

I had to re download the 384.17 firmware 3 or 4 times before it took. The prior copies kept failing out, they got corrupted during the dl somehow. The last copy worked...humpf, a case of FM (Freakin' Magic) as my old man would say.