Asus RT-N66u bricked?

[velillen]

Ok so i could use some help here. Just got a Asus RT-N66u to replace my old router (a buffalo) since it was giving me some trouble.

Right from the get go things werent going smoothly. I got the Asus all setup and it connected fine wirelessly but for some reason my unraid server and htpc werent on the network. Played around and couldnt quite figure it out but figured o well i want to use DD-WRT anyways. So i tried to flash it and well now it seems to be dead.

I followed the directions here
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Asus_RT-N66U

Upgraded via webgui. Waited 30 minutes or so (went to the store). Came back and the thing is just...dead. Cant connect to it in firefox or even ping it. Using a cable the laptop that is connected never connects to the Asus (just says no network access). I tried the 30-30-30 reboot. Tried holding down the WPS button and resetting. I tried the asus resuce utility but it just says "cant connect to router" so its no good.

LED wise the power led does what its supposed to (ie stay lit for normal, fast blinking for wps, super slow for recovery mode) and the cable hooked to the laptop is lit and flashes as if showing activity.


So any ideas on how to fix this? Or did i truly brick it?

 

[kevnich2]

Well good news - it's almost impossible to brick an asus router that can be flashed. Bad news - you have to follow the directions exactly and I would avoid using the web gui method. Get the asus firmware recovery and use that method. It uses tftp as it's mechanism and I've never seen it fail yet. Just remember after it's says its finished, wait a full 2 minutes before restarting the unit so it properly saves itself to nvram. If you don't give it full 2 minutes, you have to start the whole process over.

 

[John Connor]

Check out this thread. http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=171783&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

 

[velillen]

Well good news - it's almost impossible to brick an asus router that can be flashed. Bad news - you have to follow the directions exactly and I would avoid using the web gui method. Get the asus firmware recovery and use that method. It uses tftp as it's mechanism and I've never seen it fail yet. Just remember after it's says its finished, wait a full 2 minutes before restarting the unit so it properly saves itself to nvram. If you don't give it full 2 minutes, you have to start the whole process over.

Ive tried to use the Asus firmware recovery. It just can never connect to the router and ive tried different methods such as static ip's, 30-30-30 then do it, power off hold wps and reset then let go of wps. All sorts of things and non of them have been letting the software (running on my laptop) connect to the router. It just times out and says no router found.

Unless you mean running the firmware recovery via a different method in which case i didnt know you even could.

 

[Elixer]

What are the LEDs showing when you power the router on ?

 

[JackMDS]

After hardware reset try to connect it with a network cable to a stand alone computer (not on any network) configured with a static IP of the default subnet of the Router (like 192.168.1.100).

 

[velillen]

Well made some progress at least.

Followed that page over at DD-WRT for the recovery. Using only IE and static ip of 192.168.1.2 and putting the Router into recovery mode. Now when i try logging in it brings up a CFE miniWeb Server to upload . Tried to just upload the default firmware and it says it sends it to the router then the page just sorts of sits there. I let it sit for 30 minutes. nothing so i rebooted the router and nothing changed.

So tried the Firmware Restore utility. It connects to the router, uploads 100% to the router, gets to 95% of "system recovery in progress" and then suddenly says "Failed to connect to the wireless router. Check the routers LED is blinking, which denotes resuce mode"

So thats the weird thing cause it starts off witht he slow blink and then by the time that message pops up there is no power LED at all. it just stays off

 

[John Connor]

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=753640

 

[velillen]

Well without touching a thing last night i woke up this morning to the router showing the wireless as being on. logged in and it let me log in. So went and updated to the dd-wrt and got that up and running sort of. Now i just need to hook up the asus to the internet and rest of the network and see how it works there.

Thanks for the help guys

 

[Zhuinden]

What works for me with putting the router in recovery is the following:

I had a similar problem, as in I was unable to access Recovery Mode even while plugging in power and pressing the Reset button during doing so.

The solution was the following sequence of actions:
- Unplug the router
- Hold WFS Button
- Plug power in the router
- Wait until the power LED starts flashing
- Release WFS Button
- When all the LEDs light up, start pressing Reset button
- Tadah! the power LED is now flashing slowly - recovery mode has been reached!

Afterwards, ASUS Recovery Tool can put the firmware on it. It takes like 20 minutes and sometimes it doesn't work, after which one must repeat the process again.

One time I ran into a problem that the router always went into recovery, what I did was that I was mashing the buttons and it "skipped" the recovery mode, so then I went into the firmware setup and updated the firmware from the web GUI. It stopped going to recovery after.

 

[Engineer]

One time I ran into a problem that the router always went into recovery, what I did was that I was mashing the buttons and it "skipped" the recovery mode, so then I went into the firmware setup and updated the firmware from the web GUI. It stopped going to recovery after.

It probably didn't stop going to recovery, Asus recently stopped flashing the power LED when in recovery mode on many of their routers. You can still go to recovery mode (even if you think it's not working) and navigate to the mini CFE webserver address and it will most likely work. This has been a cause of grief for many lately.

Oh, and old thread is old....like me.