Unable to change the factory firmware on my hAPac2

RouterOS General
1

I tried following methods with Winbox 3.34/WinBox 4.0beta35 on windows 11 x64
in order to upgrade the factory firmware on the routerboard from v6.42.3 to 7.20.1
while the current firmware and upgrade firmware shows 7.20.1 but the factory firmwar is still 6.42.3

I downloaded the router-os-7.20.1.-arm.npk and uploaded it into the files folder and then rebooted the router
nothing has change and the uploaded .npk file vanishes after reboot.

I have tried netinstall and after installation no changes with the factory firmware version was observed
How can I upgrade the factory firmware to 7.20.1?

2

.npk Is usually the software (RouterOs).
And you cannot upgrade "directly", you have to go through 7.12.1 and possibly before that you need latest v6.x.

Given the limited size of storage It should however be considered to use the netinstall procedure.

Check:

But the factory firmware Is the firmware that was installed in factory and cannot normally be changed.

3

The „Factory Firmware“ shows the version that the device was originally shipped with. It cannot be changed (and does not need to).

If 7.20.1 is displayed under “Current Firmware,” the latest RouterOS version is correctly installed.

Does /system/package/update/print also show 7.20.1?

4

There is the protected bootloader, (which might be what you want)

From: https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/spaces/ROS/pages/40992878/RouterBOARD

This section only applies to older devices that display a particular error message! Do not change the bootloader without seeing a message instructing you to do it.

The protected RouterBOOT feature is supported by all modern MikroTik devices, but if you have and old device, if your factory-firmware version is lower than 7.19.3 and your device displays the message → The "protected routerboot" feature requires a backup-routerboot upgrade ← when trying to enable the feature, do the following…

There have been a few editions of the backup bootloader upgrade procedure.

5

The latest "opportunity" to upgrade factory routerboard version was with ROS/routerboard version 7.18.2 (yes, there were some rare occasions before that). Alas, it wasn't available for all devices, only a few device models qualify, mostly older ones and only rare ARM-based ones. And hAP ac2 was not one of them (I know, I have one, I tried, it failed). I have a few different device models and amongst them the only one supported to upgrade factory firmware was RB951G:

[user@device] /system/routerboard> print 
       routerboard: yes         
             model: RB951G-2HnD 
     serial-number: 5D6105xxxxxx
     firmware-type: ar9344      
  factory-firmware: 7.18.2      
  current-firmware: 7.20.1      
  upgrade-firmware: 7.20.1



[user@another_device] /system/routerboard> print 
       routerboard: yes             
        board-name: hAP ac^2        
             model: RBD52G-5HacD2HnD
     serial-number: 8FDE09yyyyyy    
     firmware-type: ipq4000L        
  factory-firmware: 6.42.3          
  current-firmware: 7.19.6          
  upgrade-firmware: 7.19.6

Device came with factory routerboard firmware 3.24 (or something alike).

As others already mentioned: upgrading factory firmware is rarely needed, as long as device functions at least somehow normally, it'll use "normal" routerboard firmware to boot RouterOS. Backup routerboard firmware only comes into the picture in very singular cases. Hence it's not really vital to get it upgraded (and can hardly be upgraded to same version as "running" Routerboard firmware).