Cheers guys I'll give that a try first. If it doesn't work, nothing is lost.

But I think I gotta upgrade my 2820 to the latest firmware before I do anything.

The delivery of my 2860 is taking forever

It's not something I've tried (cards on the table).

When I moved from a 2820 to a 2860 I reinstalled from scratch, didn't realise this was a possibility, but I guess it's worth a try

A bit of an update.

So last night I updated both the 2820 and the 2860 to the latest firmwares, made a backup of the 2820, and restored it to the 2860.

And it seemed to work. I could log on with the original credential, but after like 30 secs or so it started to boot loop

I managed to run Syslog though, and it seemed like it's something to do with the WAN1 ADSL, because the last line before rebooting is something along the lines of "Initiating PPP".

Unplugged the phone line, and the boot loop stopped!

Made a few changes in the WAN1 Internet Access page (but I can't remember what I changed), saved & rebooted. And voila, WAN1 usable and no boot loop!

Still plenty of things to test though like VPN etc.

Also the DHCP settings were messed up.

can i ask if it was a V version, as i am just about to go from a 2820v to a 2860v over the years i have made loads of changes and setting, forwards, but the worst is i have 3 VoIP accounts that i have no idea of the passwords , the acounts work as they should so i would love to back up and restore to save trying to find the passwords

Sorry no idea, mine was from N to AC.