WRT54G V8 abnormal setup story, and questions

Question

Seeing that they were on sale in Radio Shack, I bought one to replace the POS BEFW11S4, hoping that as a newer and widely used model it will have fewer design flaws.
However, trouble began on the very first setup screen - using Web setup on 192.168.1.1 - where I tried to change the time zone from the factory default PST to EST. Clicking "Save settings" (or whatever the button is called) resulted in a totally empty white screen. I waited a little, but nothing changed, so I hit the "back" arrow. In short, the WRT54G was not remembering any of the changes I made - in any of the different setup screens, clicking "Save settings" resulted in a white screen and the factory defaults did not change.
This was starting to look very much like defective Flash memory (or whatever memory they use to store the settings), but I decided to give it another try with the installation utility that came on its CD. This seemed to run well up to a point, where it said that it failed to install the English language pack (and why did it have to install it to begin with, I wonder - it was communicating properly in English to begin with), and that was that. The utility was not getting past this point. I opened the Web interface again, and found it seriously damaged - only two setup screens present, and no "Save settings" buttons on any of them. Resetting to factory default by any of the methods I looked up here on this forum didn't change a thing - the Web interface was permanently crippled.
It was clear that the unit is defective and I'll be returning it, but I decided as a final try to run the Linksys EasyLink Advisor (found elsewhere on this forum) and see what it has to say. Well, it ran, and actually configured the router the way I wanted, and the router was working! However, the Web interface remained crippled, and that was decisive, since many of the advanced settings that I use have no controls in LELA.
So today I exchanged the unit with another one, and will be setting it up tomorrow. I'd be interested in reading any suggestions you might have as answer to my questions:
- Does my assumption that it was a defective unit seem plausible? I can't imagine that using the Web interface first can damage the firmware, all the warnings on the box and the unit to "run the CD first" notwithstanding.
- In light of that, should I perhaps upgrade the firmware before I do anything else? (I downloaded the latest version 8.00.2, the one inside is presumably 8.00.0 (it was on the one I returned)).
- Has anybody run into similar problems when setting up the V8? In particular, have they deprecated the Web setup in favor of setup tools like LELA and such?

Answer 1

OK, here is the update. As I suspected, the first router was defective. The replacement unit has been up and running for some days now.
Pros:
- So far has not frozen from streaming video/audio traffic. This was one of the reasons I was looking for a new router to replace the BEFW11S4.
- So far has not frozen without reason from just sitting overnight (another reason to replace the BEFW11S4).
- Does not freeze instantly when UPnP is turned on (a third reason to replace the BEFW11S4), and UPnP actually works.
Cons:
- Absolutely no change in user features from the BEFW11S4, the setup menus are almost identical (excluding of course the new wireless options). I was hoping to be able to tell DHCP to give static IP addresses to specific MAC addresses; no such thing.
- The firewall screen does not show the ports opened by UPnP; it only shows the static ones that can be setup by using the screen. In essence, you don't know the state of the firewall; that's bad. Maybe this is the same behavior as in BEFW11S4, but I wouldn't know - it could not work at all with UPnP activated.
- There appears to be some mix-up in the router help screen for wireless security. For WPA2, it says "Choose TKIP+AES if you have both WPA and WPA2 devices on your network.". However, when I set WPA2 and selected TKIP+AES, the WPA clients could not connect; I had to set it back to just WPA. I don't think I was doing anything wrong, but I'm not 100% sure.
- Just like in BEFW11S4, if I look at the DHCP client table from time to time, it empties itself; at some point it becomes totally empty. Combined with the lack of static IP, this makes using IP stuff on the local network (like Telnet or FTP) a PITA.
- Not unexpectedly, IPX/SPX does not cross the wireless/wired boundary of the LAN, although it should. This is apparently a common problem with cheap equipment, and I'm not sure if it is actually the WRT54G's fault, or the wireless adapters'.
That's it, more or less. Does anybody here know if any custom firmware for the WRT54G addresses these issues? But with my luck, it will be probably for the old hardware platform, not the new one in V8.