Admin password problems after flashing 378.56 on RT-AC66U

[just_asking]

My RT-AC66U had stopped allowing my normal logon. (A second RT-AC66U in Bridge mode also "forgot" my normal logon. This post only concerns my main router.)

Thinking I might have been hacked, I used the default admin/admin, which was successful, flashed 378.56 and reset to factory default. I now have the following problems:

• I cannot change the admin password on the Administration > System tab. (I'm not changing the username, just the password. And the password is about a dozen characters long, nothing weird.) The UI form gets submitted without error (the "Use this password on your next login" popup appears) but when I log back in, the router rejects the new password; I must use admin/admin to get back in.
• The admin UI also asks me to log in again on a regular basis, e.g. when switching tabs on the Network Map page.

This occurs in both Firefox and Chrome, with and without LastPass enabled.

Due to security concerns, I would much rather have Merlin's firmware running on my router than ASUS's. Thanks for your help.

 

[Shonk]

try doing it from http://192.168.0.1
or whatever yours is

 

[just_asking]

Hey, it worked! Thanks. (I was previously accessing the router admin UI by entering "router" in my browser -- I have "router" mapped to 192.168.1.1 in my hosts file.)

Why would accessing through the IP address successfully change the admin password, but accessing through the host name fail?

 

[Shonk]

there's a bug in the rt-ac66u firmware