If you must rely on Google, use the advanced operators provided in Part 3. Bookmark the legitimate results, ignore the SEO-spammed "driver updater" sites, and always keep a backup of your current working firmware on your local drive.

The first page of results was a chaotic bazaar. There were links to shady file-hosting sites with names like drivers-4-free.net and routermagic.xyz . There were forum posts in languages Elias didn’t speak, their English translations broken and frantic: "Help, brick after flash" and "Firmware HG8245W5 not work, WiFi dead."