wl500g dead, dead, dead... Or not ?

[Antiloop]

My WL-500g suddenly won't give any access and every 10 seconds all lights go off and back on (restarting). At that time network traffic is broken (for lets say 2 seconds), and then i am talking about ethernet traffic and not wireless because wireless does not work at all. It is since new firmware is installed or it has a hardware problem. Actually it is exactly like the problem of a previous post.
The AIR light also doesn't come on and the router is not seen by the discover utility. Web access or pinging to 192.168.1.1 also doesn't work so i can't see what is going on. I have the option to bring it back but i can't stand not knowing whats going on. Does anyone have a clue ?

you should recover it then: press the restore button, then connect power to the device. after doing that the Power led begins to flash, start the recovery procedure from your pc and everything should be fine after finishing

[jbkerner]

Yesterday my WL-500G had the same symptoms like below after playing with NVRAM. The restore utility doesn`t work but i found a great solution (Thanks JockyW:http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?t=1451&highlight=dead

Recovery!!:
-----------
1. pull power cable and wait 20 seconds
2. keep button pressed and connect power cable: power led should flash
3. ping 192.168.1.1 should reply else redo steps 1 and 2
4. run Asus Firmware restoration tool, select firmware file (e.g. wg01080109_WL500g_EN.trx) and press upload.
After some seconds press the Abort button or wait until it says "Upload fails! Please check the connection"
5. from a dos box or linux console run: tftp -i 192.168.1.1 put wg01080109_WL500g_EN.trx
6. tftp returns something like: "Transfer successful: 3731456 bytes in 2 seconds, 1865728 bytes/s" if it doesn't redo steps 1-5 (sometimes I needed three or four times before it worked)
7. after ca. 80 seconds your Asus should reboot

I did this procedure with
1. wl500g-clear-nvram.trx
2. wl500g-recover.trx
Then I could flash any firmware and the device was alive again.....

ciao,
jbk

[heinz57g]

have been trying this now 5 times:

>> 1. pull power cable and wait 20 seconds
>> 2. keep button pressed and connect power cable: power led should flash
>> 3. ping 192.168.1.1 should reply else redo steps 1 and 2

no chance: pinging comes back HOST NOT REACHABLE.

so also no further steps possible. any ideas?

greetings - heinz -

[tomilius]

Just to also mention it here...
You did try leaving the router off for a while, right?

[heinz57g]

10-20 minutes at a time, should be enough, no?

i have now become something like an acrobat, pressing an almost non-existing button in the back, at the same time plugging in the powercable, and all the time watching the LED in the front. while with my third hand selecting files on the computer and pressing ENTER. forget the mouse ...

greetings - heinz -

PS: one thing that i cant quite figure out: does not occasionally somebody of ASUS (sales/service) check this most competent board? they MUST have a foolproof method to reset a dead unit, they would not have the time to try 32 systems how to get back to recovery mode and to flash a new system.
i was not trying to be ironic when i said 'competent' to the members of this board, but it just seems that too many opinions sometimes overshadow the real (and often simple) way.

[tomilius]

The truth is, most people don't have as much trouble as you do. I didn't have your EXACT problem, but my router was doing something to the effect of sending out 1 packet per second (really). I unplugged it and plugged it back in but that didn't help. I had to leave it unplugged--all night. Sure, 10 or 20 minutes sounds reasonable... but it was 2 AM or so when I was doing this anyway, and I had thought it was broken so I just left it unplugged all night and it worked normally in the morning.

It's not that there's a single, simple, working way to solve these problems. It's situation-dependent, I'd expect.

But here's the guide that should get it working or your router is toast (probably overheated and melted something):
1. Leave the router completely unplugged for 12 hours at room temperature or below.
2. Boot the router with the button on the back held down.
3. Notice the blinking LEDs.
4. Now, set a wired computer's IP address to anything in the 192.168.1.0 subnet (probably other than 192.168.1.1--192.168.1.10 works).
5. Run the ASUS Firmware Restoration utility.
6. Use it to upload some firmware--some good firmware, not corrupted or such.

That stuff should work under any circumstances... or your router is toast.

[heinz57g]

tom, did just that. night in the cooler DID make a difference, at least it was found and recognized.

the update with the 1.8.1.9 version the also started, also a new feeling. it went for about 15-20 seconds, then broke of with the usual FAILED error and asking me to check the connection.

then unplugged it, held RESET for 10 seconds, turned it on again, and now it
is recognized in DISCOVER, but when i check the version, it shows 1.9.2.7,
which is the one i had tried to flash on saturday, and which broke the whole thing.

what do i have now? half a 1819, half a 1927? a corrupted one? setup and all
screens show up normally, but i will only have a chance to check operation late this afternoon. and as a newcomer in this field i will probably not find out any hidden mistakes of inconsistencies for quite a while, or untill it is too late.

any suggestions? try the whole thing over again?

greetings - heinz -