@bbx screen shots of bridged router

wds status run

dhcp disabled

when you connect the tplink router to the main router via wds, your tplink router will indicate that it is not connected to the internet since its internet status dpend on the wan connection of your tplink router. If you want to test out if you successfully connected wds, try connecting to the ssid you created on tplink router ( you can setup it up as same ssid as your main router so that you'll have seamless connection throughout your home). If you want to still access your router after setting WDS, make sure that you LAN address is within same subnet of your network.

  @NGSC yes it always had same subnet, but evidently this stream has split, I'm past that now and have a live bridged router,

but now I can only log into the host router, which is a  problem because I have to change the wireless passwords.

  @bbx 

 

Did you ever change the IP address for the Archer C7? since its default IP is 192.168.0.1 as well, there will be IP conflict as your host router, you need to change it to 192.168.0.2 etc. to avoid the IP conflict but still within the same subnet.

 

For now, you could try turnning off your main router first and check if 192.168.0.1 will be able to access the C7 web interface, if the client device has no IP address in this way, you may need to configure a static IP address for your computer first.

However, if it doesn't work either, you could reset the C7 to factory defaults and set up the WDS again, but please remember to change the C7 LAN IP to 192.168.0.2 before disabling DHCP and enabling WDS.