Hi all,

A LONG while ago (6-8 months) when the licence policy changed and Netinstall was written, I posted I would eventually try and upgrade my x86 2.9.26 system using Netinstall....

Well I have finally bitten the bullet and done it, to 2.9.40. I was worried I would lose both my licence, key and configuration....

However I backed everything up MANY times.. (luckily as it turned out)

I can access the router in question easily so I removed the CF card and ran Netinstall on a standard XP machine. However I could NOT seem to enable the option 'keep original configuration'. Nevertheless I had to go on to allow me to update by FTP in the future.

I ran netinstall and LO ! - all the configuration was lost. I booted the x86 router with a local display and keyboard and added IP addresses for ethernet interfaces. Needless to say all the ether1, ether2 etc had changed so I had to get the right address and the right card by looking at the MAC.

Finally I had the right IP address and could ping it and Winbox in.

a) To my surprise the software ID and key seemed ok
b) NOT to my surprise the configuration was totally wiped...
c) As I stressed above, I took MANY backups on my computer.
d) I restored from the latest backup and LO ! - it worked.
e) SO - I am now running 2.9.40, having upgraded from 39 to 40 by FTP. But the MORAL of the story is (what did I do wrong) - but to KEEP BACKUPS when you do this. And beware if it is a remote box up a mountain or tower.

f) Finally if someone can tell me what I did wrong, fine - but I could not see how I could enable 'retain original config' at all.

Good luck if you try Netinstall as I had to, but at least I can now go back to the (nearly!) foolproof FTP upgrades. Hope this helps someone.

Cheers all.