Parky Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 Just a quick word to the wise.... Windows 7 has a very nifty feature that offers to "troubleshoot" network connectivity issues for those who aren't savvy enough to figure it out on their own. Speaking from my own experience, proceed with extreme caution if utilizing this feature. I'm running a Linksys WRT 54G wireless router with DD-WRT 3rd party firmware, but I somehow doubt the problem I encountered is exclusive to that specific hardware/firmware combo. It doesn't matter how good you are at securing your wireless network when this particular scenario rears it's ugly head. It seems my son was unable to connect to our wireless network the other day, so rather than wait for me, he chose to let Windows 7 "troubleshoot" the connectivity issue. The connectivity problem was with our ISP and totally unrelated to our wireless configuration. Guess what Windows 7's idea of troubleshooting the issue was??? It basically reset our router to it's default settings and wiped out any and all wireless security measures (WPA2 in this particular instance). I came home to find about 8 people using our broadband connection.........not good. At first I was convinced somebody with some very sharp skills had managed to hack the router remotely. Tough to do when the default IP has been changed, wireless GUI is disabled, SSID is disabled, DHCP allows for only one address, Mac Address filtering is being utilized for the DHCP client, the username and password are extremely complex, and the security key is a 256 bit encrypted, 63 character ASCII entry. Took me a whle to figure out what had happened, but my son mentioned having run the Windows 7 network troubleshooter. I've since experimented with it and determined that it did in fact reset the router to DD-WRT defaults. I haven't had a chance to test this with any other routers or firmware yet, but thought I'd throw this up as a red flag to anyone with the same (or perhaps different?) hardware/firmware configuration. Cheers, Parky Quote
Von Paulus Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 Never happened with me, so far he has only messed with my IP network fixed structure if I let him solve a IP conflict. So far he has only messed in the local machine. But I wonder how could he have reset your router. Each brand has different software. Quote
davenunez Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 But hang on - your router has it's own admin level username and password to change settings. That is not stored in Windows anywhere (as in, Windows does not even have a place for you to enter those credentials). How could it then possibly change your settings? I don't see how that could be what happened. Quote
almccoyjr Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 (edited) I'm running a Linksys WRT 54G wireless router with DD-WRT 3rd party firmware, Does the DD-WRT firmware replace the semaphore flag "data" that old WRT-54G router used? plug_nickel ps; be very wary of any MS troubleshooting triggers. Edited July 1, 2011 by almccoyjr Quote
Parky Posted July 1, 2011 Author Posted July 1, 2011 But hang on - your router has it's own admin level username and password to change settings. That is not stored in Windows anywhere (as in, Windows does not even have a place for you to enter those credentials). How could it then possibly change your settings? I don't see how that could be what happened. I'm already convinced that you're a qualified network analyst. Allow me to qualify that comment though. Nobody said anything about router usernames or passwords being "stored in Windows". Even if they were, what does that have to do with the problem I described in my initial post? Did you by any chance miss the part where I said "the username and password are extremely complex"?? Your question about how "Windows" could possibly change any network settings is pretty uneducated.....period. Move along...... Parky Quote
Parky Posted July 1, 2011 Author Posted July 1, 2011 I'm running a Linksys WRT 54G wireless router with DD-WRT 3rd party firmware, Does the DD-WRT firmware replace the semaphore flag "data" that old WRT-54G router used? plug_nickel ps; be very wary of any MS troubleshooting triggers As far as the semaphore flag "data" problem is concerned, I don't really give a s**t. Quite honestly, I don't even know what a semaphore flag data problem is. I did know however, Dr. McCoy, that you would in all probability, jump in here just to confuse the s**t out of me even more. Thanks..... Cheers Mate, Parky Quote
almccoyjr Posted July 2, 2011 Posted July 2, 2011 You're quite welcome Parky. Semaphore flags, before wireless. Notice the word old between "data" and WRT-54G. I'm using a WRT160n w/DD-WRT firmware and it doesn't even have an USB external connection. That's old. I guess I should have used the word ancient instead of old. plug_nickel Quote
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