Erratic Router UI after power failure

[jabloomf1230]

Erratic Router UI after power failure (SOLVED)

We had a very short power failure where the power to our neighborhood went off for about a minute and then came back on. After this happened, the network seemed okay, but when I tried to go into the RT-N66U UI, some of the buttons were missing and some of the pages would not load. It didn't matter whether it was accessed from a wired or wireless connection. Every time the UI is accessed it seems to behave slightly differently. It doesn't matter whether I access the UI with IE, Chrome or Firefox. The router was plugged into a surge protector, for what that is worth.

I did the usual "due diligence", rebooted the router, reset the router, restored the router to factory settings etc., but the UI is still behaving erratically. It is running the stock 260 build of the firmware, so I'm not sure if I would gain anything by changing that. Besides, since I have lost faith in the integrity of the UI, I'm am a little hesitant to change the firmware for fear that the router could lock up during the firmware update process and then I would have a total brick.

The interesting thing is that the network is perfectly fine. The router is hardwired to two other wireless routers running as APs, there are two IP cameras, two wireless printers and the router has a USB stick. My gut feeling is to leave well enough alone. This router has been rock solid since purchased, roughly a month after the model hit the US market. On the other hand, I'm worried that the router could fail at any moment.

Any thoughts on what is causing this and how to fix it? My thinking is to buy a new router, in case this one catastrophically fails, but if there is better solution, I would rather go that route.

 

[got_milk]

You could try reflashing the firmware to the router. If you're not comfortable using the web interface to do it, you could reboot the router into recovery mode and use the recovery tool to flash it.

 

[RMerlin]

Could be a browser cache issue. Try clearing your browser cache, or using a different browser to see what happens.

If you had a USB disk plugged to the router, unplug it, plug it to a computer, and run a filesystem check to fix any issues.

 

[jabloomf1230]

You could try reflashing the firmware to the router. If you're not comfortable using the web interface to do it, you could reboot the router into recovery mode and use the recovery tool to flash it.

Good idea. I saw that option and if the problem continues, I may try that.

 

[jabloomf1230]

Could be a browser cache issue. Try clearing your browser cache, or using a different browser to see what happens.

If you had a USB disk plugged to the router, unplug it, plug it to a computer, and run a file system check to fix any issues.

It's very possible. I will try that also. That could explain the erratic nature, since the all the devices use different browsers. The iOS devices use Chrome and Safari. The PCs use Chrome almost exclusively, so I would I would think that using either Firefox or IE wouldn't show that problem, since the UI has never been accessed with those browsers before.

Also, the USB stick is fine, as is the network behavior, as best I can tell. Everything seems to be working normally, so I am hesitant to do anything drastic. Of course, at some point I may have to make some changes to settings via the router's UI, so that is a problem of sorts.

Also, do you see any troubleshooting benefits to flashing the router with your firmware?

Two good (and low risk) ideas. Thanks to you both.

 

[RMerlin]

Also, do you see any troubleshooting benefits to flashing the router with your firmware?

Not from a troubleshooting point of view, altho my firmware does resolve a few stability issues that can cause router crashes or some webui pages to fail loading when certain network devices are connected to the network and use an invalid hostname.

 

[jabloomf1230]

Here's an update. I took a chance and uploaded a fresh copy of the 260 firmware and that fixed the problem of the UI behaving erratically, except on the one Windows 8 PC (The Win 7 and iOS devices see the UI fine now). Now, that PC only gets to the login screen of the router and then times out after the userid and password are entered. I turned off the Windows 8 Firewall, but that made no difference. I'm going to take a look at some of the Win 8 message boards to see if I can find something helpful there.

The weird thing is, that from the Win 8 PC I can access the management interfaces for every device except for the RT-N66U and the other ASUS router (an RT-N16N that is being used as an access point). This includes the Belkin wireless router being used as an AP, two printers and two Trendnet IP cameras. It looks to me like there is some conflict between Win 8 networking and the ASUS scripting that exists on those specific pages. I even used ZenMap to see if I could see anything unusual, but there was nothing specific there. I could re-install the network driver and even re-install the network device, but that seems a bit drastic, at least for now.

 

[nubyOz]

Hi,

Just a really long shot.
You have a few other routers, maybe they got "confused" and reset themselves.
That could cause all kinds of problems starting with using the same IP address as the primary router.
If you still have problems, may turn those others off when you trouble shoot.

Cheers

 

[jabloomf1230]

Well, as it turns out, the last vestige of the problem (the Win 8 PC) is unrelated to either Win 8 or the routers. It is caused by Avast. All the Win 7 PCs have Microsoft's own A/V Security Suite. It got such lousy reviews, that for Win 8, I disabled it's successor, Windows Defender and installed Avast A/V. With Avast A/V temporarily disabled, the ASUS router UIs work fine. Multiple problems, I guess, but I'm surprised the latter issue (Avast) didn't show up immediately when I installed Win 8.

Thanks everyone for the help.