firmware upgrade gone wrong

i tried to upgrade my rt-ac68u from the previous merlin (version prior to version 378.56_2). After the upload, i rebooted the device manually (maybe I did it the wrong way by unplugging the power cord instead of just pushing the on/off button. Now I ended up with no internet, no wireless signal and a power led that goes on and off slowly. Is this something that is easy fixed doing a firmware restoration or is there another way to get my router back alive. I read about holding down wps button while powering off and on. Should i reinstall the official Asus firmware or can I go with the previously working merlin one

You won't have broken the router

Holding down wps as you described restores the settings back to factory default, so you might want to leave that to last, unless you don't mind restoring them yourself. That said, given you can't know what might be corrupted, I'd probably restore just for peace of mind. I think any of the options you suggested are sound, Pulling out the power cord, and switching off the main power switch are the same thing - you're breaking the power supply into the router (unless you mean uplugging the adapter from the wall, which might have a slightly different characteristic eg power tailing off rather than a sudden break), though of course it's best to use the switch.

I think when this happened to me when I first got the router, I reflashed with the larest Asus firmware and then reflashed with the latest Merlin firmware, but I suspect whatever I'd have done would have had the same effect.


Remember: you restore/reset to factory default settings AFTER flashing the new firmware. (There may be no harm doing it beforehand as some people do, provided you also do it afterwards as well.). And as an alternative to restoring to factory default settings using the wps button, you can also do it from within the web GUI, though, for those occasions when you can't access the GUI, the wps method is ideal.

Herbots said:

i tried to upgrade my rt-ac68u from the previous merlin (version prior to version 378.56_2). After the upload, i rebooted the device manually (maybe I did it the wrong way by unplugging the power cord instead of just pushing the on/off button. Now I ended up with no internet, no wireless signal and a power led that goes on and off slowly. Is this something that is easy fixed doing a firmware restoration or is there another way to get my router back alive. I read about holding down wps button while powering off and on. Should i reinstall the official Asus firmware or can I go with the previously working merlin one

Click to expand...

Your router in rescue mode currently. You will need Firmware Restoration software from Asus site or from cd which came up with router.

Make sure to set static ip on your machine which you gonna install software.

Router default address 192.168.1.1, you can use anything like 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.255 and subnet 255.255.255.0 and default gateway 192.168.1.1

https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Networking/RTAC68U/HelpDesk_Download/

thanks all. All went well and router is up and running again

Excellent news and thanks for the update. Fot the benefit of anyone with a similar problem in future, what did you do to fix it?

I have had this happen with my AC87U multiple times even when I followed all the steps. As hawk documented above, I have set up my LAN connected PC to a static IP to try and access the router, but once that recovery Screen times out or whatever, nothing I do will allow me to access the router. I found when it gets into this mode, the best thing to do is to use the ASUS Firmware Restoration utility and install the FW you are trying to upgrade too.

It has resurrected the router every time for me. It just happened to me yesterday while trying to upgrade to the latest test build (RT-AC87U_380.57_alpha3-g18d85bf). I performed a factory default from GUI and it kept asking me for a password to get back in to GUI and the previous password did not work. I performed a Hard Reset and then could not connect to router at all.

However, as I said I have run into this before and I just used the restoration utility and all was good again.