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

[Lotar.inc]

I registered to say thank you. Doing the capacitor fix saved my router from 5 leds death.

@pender. To open the adapter you just have to crack the glue. Stick a flat screwdriver in the side of the adapter and press hard until it cracks (in second image at red arrow), and it should smell of burned electrolyte .

I didn't find any 1200uF capacitor (red arrow -old one). I only got a 1500uF / 16V (circle, fat new one). Works like a charm.



Also i drilled holes in every side oh the plastic case for ventilation.

[ferdz_33]

looks like i have the same problem. thanks guys. now time to look for a new power adapter.

[_Basser_]

My Asus WL-500 suddenly stopped working. After investigation I determined that the cause was a failed power supply. The LEDs flashed in sequence and the power LED would not stay on. Checked the voltage supply to the unit and found 3.24Volts not the 5V that power supply should supply. The adapter was opened and the problem was found. There was a 1200uf capacitor near the power leads leaving the adapter that appeared to have failed. The capacitor had a domed top not flat like it should be. The capacitor was replaced with a 1000uf 10V unit and now everything works perfectly. Attached are photos showing the main board with the new capacitor installed, the failed capacitor, and the solder leads location.

Hope that helps someone.

[zerg]

Hello,
Few weeks ago I had the same problem and replaced the same capacitor (1200uf), because it had dome on top. This solved the issue. It seems that this capacitor "issue" is very common for the power supply of Asus wl500GP router.

[ferdz_33]

i just found out about this recently as i encountered same problem as above (i still have my post here also). i opened the culprit and found the bloated capacitor.

i still have yet to replaced it but fortunately i was able to find a replacement adaptor/power supply (3A output) in a japan surplus shop here and got if for just Php100.00 (more or less $2)

[radko]

Please explain how to recover dead unit?
Only led LAN and WAN are on if i connect cable.
Power LED and AIR led are off.
I can't ping router also restore button doesn't work.
I try pin 9 trick but it doesn't work.
Please give me some advice and one question where is pin 16 in this router.
I checked power supplay it's OK.

best regards

[LanLord]

I had the same problem last week (LAN + WAN leds lit with no activity; POWER + AIR off). You should try with another power supply, because I'm 90% sure that's the problem even if it 'looks' OK.

I used a power unit from an USB Hub (5V 2.1 Amps).

Good luck!

[postbusjj]

Hi,
I wanted to use unoffical firmware because of my adaptor (Asus WL-130N) couldn't get IP preperly from my Asus WL-500W. Sometimes it got IP in 3-4 minutes or it couldn't get IP although connection seemed good. Then i wanted to try an unoffical firmware to solve this problem and i loaded DD-WRT SP24 mega pack. It worked 2-3 weeks without any problem and as you guess it bricked suddenly(it also didn't solve my DHCP and IP problem). I found to PIN9 method to solve my problem. I tried PIN 9 and my router could accept a new firmware after PIN9 method. I uploaded original Asus 2.0.6 firmware as soon as possible after PIN9 and i loaded original firmware successful. Then i rebooted my router immediately after uploading offical firmware and result.. 4 LAN LEDs and WAN LED solid bilinking. Power and AIR LEDs don't bilink...I know you will advise to me to change my power supply of router. I tried to boot my router while applying 5V from power supply of computer but result is same. PIN9 also doesn't work anymore. I checked power supply of my router and capacitor seems at well condition. We alreadey run it with full load (with 2 ohm load) and it shoed to us 2,5 ampere (but it showed 4,8 V). With 4 ohm it showed 1,2 ampere and 4,9V.
I couldn't find appropriate power supply for my router but i think that power is not my real problem..

So i'm so hopeless. you have any different advise for my dead router?

Best Regards

Trust me, it IS your power supply... get a new adapter 5V/2.5~3A. I had exact same symptoms, did all the good and bad stuff (shorting pin9) more than once. Man, if I knew this before, the new adapter should have saved me a lot of time and headaches. Found myself a 5V/3A from a Targus docking station...

[shortboy]

Hi guys,

first of all - thanks for this thread. It helped me to solve the problem almost immediately. I've just experienced the problem with power adapter. Exactly same behavior - 1-4 LAN + WAN leds on and nothing helped. I found out, that power adapter from my old D-Link DIR-100 is 5V/1.2A, so I plugged it in and it worked - lucky me

Looks like the WL-500gP's power supply is really crappy...

[Wayland]

Hello,

for some days now my WL-500g Premium (v1) acts very strange. I think it started with the following symptom (symptom 1):
- power LED goes out for about 0.2 seconds
- after ~0.5 seconds all 4 LAN ports + WAN port light up for another 0.5 seconds
- during this time my computer says it has lost its LAN connection (as if the router restarted..)
- router works for some seconds (all LEDs glowing as they should)
- starts over

Sometimes this went on for some hours, sometimes it stopped after some minutes. After that the router worked for some hours.


Then another symptom appeared (symptom 2):

As soon as I turned on the router (also after unplugging it for several minutes) the 4 LAN ports and the WAN port were permanentely on and all other LEDs (power and WLAN) were off. But only one LAN port and the WAN port were connected. My computer wasn't detecting a LAN connection (layer 1 problem?). So ping etc. didn't work. It was also impossible to enter recovery mode. After leaving the router on over night when I checked again it was working as usual..


Another funny behavior:

The router was working normally when I connected another computer to a LAN port. It started to do its constant rebooting (symptom 1) but stopped after a while. But my PPPoE conenction was disconnected. So I manually triggered the connect and as soon as I did the router started rebooting again. I tried it several times. When I disconnected the other computer I was able to connect to my ISP as usual.


Short history of my router:

I bought it a bit over 2 years ago (so it's out of warranty since the end of January.. :P) and almost immediately flashed it with DD-WRT. I had some troubles at some point and bricked it but was able to recover it by shortening pin 9. It was running quite stable for the last half year I think. I haven't touched it for at least a month. The faulty behavior started out of the blue.


What I've already tried:

1.
Flashing it with the clear-nvram and recover images. The flashing worked and after the recover image it seemed to run stable (didn't do a long-term test). But flashing it with DD-WRT again or the original Asus firmware restored the faulty behavior.

2.
After I read that shortening pin 9 isn't so great I did the suggested software clean up: erase /dev/mtd/3; erase /dev/mtd/4; reboot;. It couldn't find /dev/mtd/4 but deleted /dev/mtd/3 successfully. But it also didn't help.

3.
After I was stuck again with symptom 2 today I finally tried to short pin 9 again. With the case opened I noticed that the WLAN LED was also glowing but only very weakly. The router didn't even react to the pin shortening. The 5 LEDS (WAN+LAN) simply kept glowing.


So is this behavior in any way known? I've read something today in this forum about a possible problem with the power supply. Could it be the case here? It somehow correlates with the funny behavior I described above. As if the router wasn't receiving enough power for talking to another computer.


Any hint would be greatly appreciated!

[avberk]

The power supply should always be the first thing to check with funny led behaviour.

Thus, try another one with the same specs.

[wengi]

Hi,

this is by 90% power supply.
Have a look at http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?t=21515
This is a german thread but it will give you an idea of the faulty capacitor.

Otherwise get a psu 5V 2,5A.

wengi

[Wayland]

Wow cool! Thanks for the fast responses! I'll try this sometimes this week and then post back the results.

[Wayland]

Hey,

so this really worked, all the funky LED behavior stopped. I've been able to flash the router. But now I seem to have really really bricked it.

[cdman]

Thank you so much! I had the same problem and getting a new source fixed it. So I donated a little money. Thanks again!