Storytime:

After I experienced problems with the Wi-Fi on my Fritzbox VDSL router and was thankfully sent a replacement router, I set about transferring the data.
As I discovered, backups cannot be restored if the versions of the router operating system do not match exactly. In such cases, where not everything can be restored, you should normally be able to select which settings you wish to restore, but this option was not available to me.

Another option is to connect the routers to each other using a LAN cable on port 1, and connect the computer to one of the other LAN ports on the original router. You could then launch a wizard in the original router interface to carry out the data transfer. After some back and forth and unsuccessful attempts to transfer the data, I realised that the Fritzbox sent as a replacement no longer had any network functionality on its LAN ports.

So the new Fritzbox was more or less bricked.

Things were starting to get a bit awkward.

Unfortunately, none of the Fritzbox routers have a factory reset button. You can only do this via the router software menu or via an analogue or DECT telephone. In the Fritzbox current state, DECT hadn even been set up yet, and I haven had any analogue telephones at home for ages. Even if I did have DECT telephones, they wouldn have helped me anyway

In the end, luckily, it occurred to me that I actually have an analogue USRobotics modem on my Funtopia BBS, which still reliably accepts connections via telephone calls. It basically an analogue telephone :)

So I connected the telephone socket on the USRobotics modem to the analogue telephone port on the new Fritzbox router, started minicom on the Funtopia BBS Ubuntu LXC and tried various atdt commands.
atdt#991*15901590*

That was the solution, and the Fritzbox was reset to its factory settings.

As I also had older backups of the original Fritzbox settings, I restored an older backup to the new Fritzbox, which was now responding again and was compatible with the FritzOS version of the new replacement router, and then manually added the missing settings for the rest of the evening.

And so, now that the new Router is running, I can write this message =)

Mindsurfer

PS: Why didn I first update the new Fritzbox to a version of FritzOS that would have been compatible with the Fritzbox Backup I'm currently using?
The new Fritzbox 7590AX could be updated to 8.20. That was the highest version available. However, the 7590 that was due to be replaced already had FritzOS 8.21

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Mindsurfer wrote to All <=-

Storytime:

After I experienced problems with the Wi-Fi on my Fritzbox VDSL router
and was thankfully sent a replacement router, I set about transferring
the data. As I discovered, backups cannot be restored if the versions
of the router operating system do not match exactly. In such cases,
where not everything can be restored, you should normally be able to select which settings you wish to restore, but this option was not available to me.

I just wanted to put a shout out to OpenWRT, a third-party router
firmware that runs on a lot of routers. Most OEM routers are running
embedded Linux already, OpenWRT replaces it with a more featureful OS.

The OS backup isn't a binary, proprietary blob - it's a tar file of the configuration files by directory. I screwed up my configuration and the
DNS server broke, but I was able to copy over the configs via SSH and
was up and running quickly.




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Re: Re: reset router to factory s
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Mindsurfer on Sat Mar 21 2026 09:49 am

I just wanted to put a shout out to OpenWRT, a third-party router firmware that runs on a lot of routers. Most OEM routers are running embedded Linux already, OpenWRT replaces it with a more featureful OS.

I just recently switched my router from DD-WRT to OpenWRT. Recently, my router (which I was running DD-WRT on) started to act like it's starting to fail, as it started to occasionally disconnect from the outside internet, and power cycling the rouer seemed to fix that. Before buying a new router, I thought I'd try switching it to OpenWRT, and so far it seems more stable. I'll see how long it lasts. I hadn't used OpenWRT before, but it seems fairly nice.

Nightfox

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Nightfox wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

I just recently switched my router from DD-WRT to OpenWRT. Recently,
my router (which I was running DD-WRT on) started to act like it's starting to fail, as it started to occasionally disconnect from the outside internet, and power cycling the rouer seemed to fix that.
Before buying a new router, I thought I'd try switching it to OpenWRT,
and so far it seems more stable. I'll see how long it lasts. I hadn't used OpenWRT before, but it seems fairly nice.

I think that if you're going to work in IT, OpenWRT is a great way to
get experience with the concepts of networking in an environment that
doesn't hide it behind a GUI. If you're really into it, you can manage
the entire system by the command line!

I like a guy on YouTube called OneMarcFifty - he does a great series on
OpenWRT concepts.

Oh, one more nice thing about OpenWRT - I'm using Linksys WRT1900ACS
routers. They have dual firmware images. You can either leave one image
as the OEM Linksys image, put two OpenWRT images, upgrade one of them,
and if it bricks, restart it 3 times to switch to the other firmware
image and start again.



... People did not know that bananas could be peeled until 2004.
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