RT-N66U not working after restarts - power light flashing quickly

[rez]

Hi all,

Recently my RT-N66U has been giving me a lot of headaches after working fine for over a year. I have tried all things I can think of to fix it, different firmwares, settings, etc etc.

Basically it will work for a while, then the power light will start flashing continually (not the slow flash of recovery mode, but a fairly quick flashing). This will stay like this until it's turned off. Turning it back on leaves the power light quickly flashing, with none of the wireless working and being unable to access the config page via ethernet also.

The only way I've found to recover this is to enter recovery mode, flash some firmware (tried a few different Merlin builds, official ASUS builds, all the same issue), leave it for a few hours while flashing. Then turn it off for a few more hours, then clear the NVRAM. I can then set up the router from scratch again.

It will then work for a few hours before the power light starts flashing again... While the light is flashing I don't notice any problem with performance, although the last couple of times I've gone through this process I've noticed the 5GHz network disappears. If I use InSSIDer or similar I can see it, but none of my devices see it listed in available networks. Broadcast SSID is enabled.

Unfortunately I can't RMA the router as I bought it (New and unused) from a seller on ebay last year, so can't return to my place of purchase (ASUS doesn't provide RMA in the UK for routers according to them...)

Any help is much appreciated. The next post you see from me will probably be in the 'Wireless Buying Advice' section I'm starting to think...

 

[linkmaster]

May be heat issues?

 

[rez]

radio temperatures in the low 50 degrees celcius

Here's a short video clip of the power light flashing. It just does this forever until it's restarted for whatever reason

https://db.tt/yyFduXzH

Also something else I've noticed today while trying to get the 5GHz network to appear is that none of the changes I make to wireless, for example SSID or channel number actually changes what the router is doing. The GUI shows the changes, and the router says it's broadcasting the networks as I've set them, however clients all pick up the original network from when I initially set it up after the last reconfiguration.