Dead or brick ? Lan and WAN 1-4 leds on steady

[wpte]

that does sound like a powersupply is broken...
I guess a input from a PC psu shouldn't give any problems... you most likely get a more stable signal anyway

just make sure you got the cables inserted the right way

[raas]

Thanks for your reply,

I will try tonight..
nevermind about the polarity, my-digital-friend, the multimeter will tell me which is what.. (in almost 100% of the cases, the center pin is +, surrounding is ground, but I will check double.)

/offtopic
(couple of years ago, I had an external drive which power supply had died. The internals of the device were still ok, so I got (made myself) a new power supply for the external drive. Boy was I happy that I double checked that cable. The existing cable from the defect power supply had 3 wires: Black, red and yellow... Now, you normally would think: black=ground, red=5v and yellow=12v.. well.. not this particular psu: black=ground, red=12v and yellow=5v... just the other way around!)

[Crulex]

Hello everyone.

Some days ago my ASUS WL-500gP router has stopped working (it worked perfectly with Oleg's firmware 1.9.2.7-7g for more than a year).
It didn't respond to ping even after power cycle.

I've succeeded to recover it by uploading (in turn) wl500g-clear-nvram.trx, wl500g-recover.trx, WL500gp-1.9.2.7-10.trx using tftp.exe.
(Note, it didn't started to work immediately after uploading firmware but after about an hour playing with it and thinking it's dead the Web UI successfully came up).

The same problem re-appeared today.
I did the same procedure with uploading Oleg's 1.9.2.7-10 firmware.
First time it didn't respond to ping after upload.
Second time it started to ping and I can connect to device via telnet, but the web UI doesn't show up at 192.168.1.1.

Questions:
1. What can I do at this point to restore the device? Should I try the method with connecting pins in order to flash?
2. How can I make the original ASUS uploader work with my device? (It says "no wireless device found in recovery mode is found" while I'm using the recommended IP settings. I wonder why it's looking for WIRELESS device. My router is connected via Ethernet cable from my PC to LAN1).
3. Does this look like hardware problem, e.g. broken flash memory?

Thanks in advance for your help

[Crulex]

P.S. I've just discovered that 2 year warranty period for my router hasn't yet ended.
Let me know how can I guarantee clearing tracks of the Oleg's firmware and flash the original one before giving the router to the service center.

I think I'm loosing warranty if I open a router, so I won't try the method with connecting pins if not absolutely required.

[wpte]

P.S. I've just discovered that 2 year warranty period for my router hasn't yet ended.
Let me know how can I guarantee clearing tracks of the Oleg's firmware and flash the original one before giving the router to the service center.

I think I'm loosing warranty if I open a router, so I won't try the method with
connecting pins if not absolutely required.

you can simply flash the asus fw, since it ereases the entire chip anyway when flashing new FW, just like on bios chips

Anyway, for the asus fw upload tool to work you need to make sure you got the UTP cable plugged in at LAN port 1 in the router, and no other devices should be connected.
make sure you turn any firewall off on your pc
and to get in recovery mode, just unplug the router, press and hold the reset button while plugging the adapter back in. Hold it for 5 seconds, release it and it should be in recovery mode (power led is blinking).
Sometimes you need to turn off and on your LAN adapter on windows to get a ip adress... depends a bit on your pc.

[Crulex]

wpte
Thanks for your suggestion.
I've actually tried using ASUS Firmware uploader (the older version that seemed to work properly for me before) several times without any luck.
I'm using static IP (192.168.1.10, GW=DNS=192.168.1.1) and only a single cable is plugged into my PC's Ethernet card and the router's LAN1 connector.

As I'm able to upload the firmware using tftp.exe, the device enters recovery mode successfully, and the power led starts blinking.
But I had no luck using original uploader instead of tftp.exe.
Will retry today with the latest versions of ASUS firmware/uploader.

Just to confirm, do I need to flash wl500g-clear-nvram.trx, wl500g-recover.trx before flashing the original ASUS firmware?

[wpte]

wpte
Thanks for your suggestion.
I've actually tried using ASUS Firmware uploader (the older version that seemed to work properly for me before) several times without any luck.
I'm using static IP (192.168.1.10, GW=DNS=192.168.1.1) and only a single cable is plugged into my PC's Ethernet card and the router's LAN1 connector.

As I'm able to upload the firmware using tftp.exe, the device enters recovery mode successfully, and the power led starts blinking.
But I had no luck using original uploader instead of tftp.exe.
Will retry today with the latest versions of ASUS firmware/uploader.

Just to confirm, do I need to flash wl500g-clear-nvram.trx, wl500g-recover.trx before flashing the original ASUS firmware?

Well the asus fw upload tool also uses tftp, so that's the same thing
You shouldn't use static ip when trying to recover the router, since the router will lease an ip to you

wl500g-clear-nvram.trx won't make any difference really, it only is supposed to clear the settings off the device....
It may even do more damage than good, so I don't recommend it really.
I had my router exchanged once before, and just flashing the asus fw was enough to get it through the rma process

[Crulex]

wpte
You shouldn't use static ip when trying to recover the router, since the router will lease an ip to you
I thought that DHCP may not work when the router's firmware is broken, or any other case.
It seems like most of the manuals instruct to set up static IP address before flashing the router.
E.g. in the asus_install.bat file that I'm using for flashing (it just waits until router is in recovery mode and calls tftp.exe) I see the following:

echo * Set your ethernet card's settings to:
echo IP: 192.168.1.10
echo Mask: 255.255.255.0
echo Gateway: 192.168.1.1.
echo * Unplug the router's power cable.

I've flashed the router with the similar settings before using ASUS Firmware Restoration Tool.
Do you think it's worth to try with automatic IP settings?

Just going to try flashing the original firmware from ASUS.com and if the device doesn't work I'll get it through RMA process as well.

[raas]

Well,

Did some testing.
my asus device is ok! it runs
it is in fact the power supply which is giving the 'solid leds' thing.
When I run it off a pc-power supply it immediately boots and recognises all the devices (harddisk and k8055 board)

[wpte]

Well,

Did some testing.
my asus device is ok! it runs
it is in fact the power supply which is giving the 'solid leds' thing.
When I run it off a pc-power supply it immediately boots and recognises all the devices (harddisk and k8055 board)

good, now you only need a proper adaptor for your router

[NobleK]

I have the exact same problem, so I was wandering if you had found a solution yet.
PS. My power supply delivers 5.25 volt, so it should be ok.

[EdP]

Are you sure the power supply is ok?
It seems to be the culprit sometimes in such cases.

[Crulex]

EdP
Thanks for the genious reply!

I've just checked the output of power supply with multimeter, and discovered that the voltage ranges from 1 to 2 V (DC) instead of 5V as declared.

Btw do you think I can give only the power supply for the RMA?
(I think the exchange/repair might take pretty long time).

I may try another power supply, but do you think the router needs all the 2.5A as written in the original PS? Seems way too much..

[EdP]

It uses 5V, so 2.5A at 5V is only 12.5W power consumption, not a whole lot.
In other words, yes I think you need 2.5A rating.
I have no idea what you're required to send in for rma. Just ask them.

[Crulex]

Thanks. I just thought about using a typical AC adapter for (mini)USB (that gives 5V & 1A output) to power the router.
Probably I won't try this.

Will take 1 try to flash the original f/w with the broken adapter, and just send as is (with not working Oleg's firmware) if failed.