r18777 is old enough to be considered inferior in security and performance. The good thing is, you can slim down a newer firmware with the help of firmware-mod-kit.
Check out the wiki page for usage, it is very simple.
Take 05-27-2014-r24160 for example,
1. Download firmware-mod-kit and install the prerequisites, just follow the wiki page and everything will be OK.
2. Put wnr2000v3-webflash.bin into the directory of firmware-mod-kit.
3. Open a console/terminal and cd to firmware-mod-kit
4. Run ./extract-firmware.sh
5. Run ./ddwrt-gui-extract.sh
6. Check out the directory "www/lang_pack", leave english.js, and optionally another one or two intact. Wipe the contents of any other js files. Be aware, Don't delete any files here. Wiki page says
Quote:
You may modify the files any way you like, but you cannot add or delete files.
7. Run ./ddwrt-gui-rebuild.sh
8. Run ./build-firmware.sh -nopad
9. Now you can find a file [firmware-mod-kit]/fmk/new-firmware.bin, checkout its size, if it's smaller than 3715100 bytes, which is the size of r18777, you are safe to flash it to the device.
r24160 was originally 3797020 bytes which is obviously too large. I left only english.js and clear all the others, it gave me a file of 3448860 bytes, looks really safe.
Finally, I have to say that this method works in theory, I haven't tried. Anyone who may report his or her results is welcomed.
Joined: 14 Jun 2014 Posts: 1 Location: Nebraska, USA
Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2014 10:27 Post subject:
8064r7 wrote:
As long as you don't mind using TFTP you can run newer .img beyond the 18xxx. Just remember the steps require you reverting over TFTP to the factory netgear and then flashing inside of the netgear gui the initial DD-WRT of whatever revision you wish.
I followed this guy's advice and everything turned out fine.
Perhaps James2k and/or other users had some sort of unmarked revision of this model, causing their issues with the flash space? I don't know, but as of this post I'm currently running the latest standard release on my WNR2000v3.
I simply followed the usual steps. I downgraded from DD-WRT 18777std to stock NETGEAR firmware via TFTP, and then uploaded DD-WRT 24160std via the NETGEAR GUI. The router rebooted and everything works fine. However, I'm experiencing the same thing as sovbear did above. My VPN tab under Services returns a blank page, and all SSH options throughout the GUI are missing. I'm fine with this, as I never used either options anyway, but just FYI.
By default there is no PPTP nor SSH on WNR2000v3. So the absence of SSH options makes sense, and I guess it's a bug leaving the VPN tab which leads to a blank page.
Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2014 14:50 Post subject: A couple of notes
I found this forum thanks to a great posting by DonPhillipe on meritline.com.
This router is on today's specials, selling for $19.99 with free shipping. (As long as you use coupon code MLCKY20ZNL1. Normally, it's $29.99.) At that price it may be worth messing with the firmware mod kit:
Hearing that the old, informative forum topic was deleted, I had a look on the Wayback machine, and luckily it was archived back in 2012. It's preserved here:
I'm trying to revert my Netgear wnr2000 v3 back to its original firmware. I installed dd-wrt build 18777 no problem, but removing it is proving to be harder than I thought.
I held down the reset button while power cycling. The power light flashed green, and I pinged 192.168.1.1, it pinged. I did a tftp put with the earliest (I also tried the latest) version of the stock Netgear firmware. It transferred successfully. I thought everything was good, but the router never rebooted. I went to the store and came back and the power light was still flashing green. I've tried several permutations of resets, but no matter what I do, after the TFTP completes with the netgear firmware, the router doesn't reboot automatically. When I manually reboot it, dd-wrt is still there with its default settings.
Any ideas?
ladra wrote:
Hello,
I'm having the exact same issue as Andrelommech when trying to revert back to Netgear firmware. tftp shows success but when you reboot the router it will boot into ddwrt and not Netgear firmware...
Can anyone who has personal experience please explain how you managed to tftp the Netgear firmware back on to the wnr2000 v3? Maybe it's about timing? like when to let go of the reset button, before, during, or after the tftp has completed?
Or, is there something that needs to be done after the tftp completes? Also, tftp seems to complete awfully fast, 2-3 seconds, not sure if that's normal. Or maybe the tftp program, I'm using tftp2.exe from one of the other posts to use on bricked routers...
Thank you in advance for anyone who can shine some light on this matter.
I'm trying to revert my Netgear wnr2000 v3 back to its original firmware. I installed dd-wrt build 18777 no problem, but removing it is proving to be harder than I thought.
I held down the reset button while power cycling. The power light flashed green, and I pinged 192.168.1.1, it pinged. I did a tftp put with the earliest (I also tried the latest) version of the stock Netgear firmware. It transferred successfully. I thought everything was good, but the router never rebooted. I went to the store and came back and the power light was still flashing green. I've tried several permutations of resets, but no matter what I do, after the TFTP completes with the netgear firmware, the router doesn't reboot automatically. When I manually reboot it, dd-wrt is still there with its default settings.
Any ideas?
ladra wrote:
Hello,
I'm having the exact same issue as Andrelommech when trying to revert back to Netgear firmware. tftp shows success but when you reboot the router it will boot into ddwrt and not Netgear firmware...
Can anyone who has personal experience please explain how you managed to tftp the Netgear firmware back on to the wnr2000 v3? Maybe it's about timing? like when to let go of the reset button, before, during, or after the tftp has completed?
Or, is there something that needs to be done after the tftp completes? Also, tftp seems to complete awfully fast, 2-3 seconds, not sure if that's normal. Or maybe the tftp program, I'm using tftp2.exe from one of the other posts to use on bricked routers...
Thank you in advance for anyone who can shine some light on this matter.
Same problem here.
same issue here for me too. I'm trying to debug my wifi showing not showing above 150mbps.
By default there is no PPTP nor SSH on WNR2000v3. So the absence of SSH options makes sense, and I guess it's a bug leaving the VPN tab which leads to a blank page.
I did the extract, but ./rootfs/etc/langpack/ has no *.js files. Where are the files?
Or would you share your slim down build?
I do find the www file is 2.3M, which is big
That's awesome. Also running the same build and technically have repeater mode working but it is insanely slow for me. Are you having the same issues?
For instance, off the main router I get 30 mbps down/7mbps up. Off the wnr2000v3 in repeater, I get 50 kbps down/5mpbs up. Any ideas why that would be the case?
It's definitely strange. I'm reading some more and seeing that there is this mac address cloning issue.
I didn't turn on mac address cloning so maybe that's the reason, although if it was the issue, I feel like repeater mode shouldn't have worked at all as opposed to what it is doing now, which is just working really really slow.
Is it possible that the repeater is broadcasting in 802.11 g (or b)? Is b even that slow? I specified both the primary and the repeater to only use g/n so.
Hey all. Loaded 24461 on my parents wnr2000v3 and it seemed to work great. Wireless speeds excellent, snappy ddwrt interface. Was missing vpn tab as others mentioned but great otherwise.
I loaded it up over night with some torrents to test it so it doesn't crap out before i leave. This morning It seemed to have disconnected from the net. The router was responsive and showed it was connected but i couldn't ping outside the lan. A simple reboot fixed the issue. Will report back in another 24 hours. We'll see. Wanted to mention my experience.
Edit: My procedure for flashing 22461 was reverting to the first netgear firmware, then flashing only the "factory_NA.img" and not the webflash file. Is this the correct procedure. Was I supposed to flash two files?