AC68U is endlessly rebooting

[binarydad]

The router is using John's Merlin fork V27E5. The router is seemingly in an endless boot cycle where the power LED will stay solid for about 20 seconds, then the LAN lights will flash, then the USB light, then back to power, and it repeats. I can't communicate with it.

Here's what I did:

1. I disabled WMM APSD to see how it helped with an unrelated issue, then rebooted the router.
2. When it came up, wireless and wired transfers would then dip to almost 0mbps every 5 seconds or so. It still did this even after re-enabling WMM APSD, and even after several reboots.
3. I did a factory reset, it still didn't fix the dips, oddly. Weird thing is the LAN speeds on the switch part were behaving in the same way as wireless.
4. I used the restore utility to downgrade back down to V26E4.
5. At this point, the router never came back up and started rebooting over again

One weird thing is on my modem, it said the COAX cable was disconnected (VZ ActionTec router in bridge mode), but it wasn't. It eventually came back up, but it was weird that it even happened. Seemed unrelated, yet coincidental.

Did I break it? What can I do? Worst case, I can return or exchange it since I just purchased it. Thanks.

 

[Pierino]

Turn it off, hold the wps button in while turning it on.
Hold the wps button in till it flashes then let go and let it boot up.
If that doesn't work, do the same procedure with the reset button except when it starts flashing log into 192.168.1.1 and use the cfe mini web server to upload the firmware or use the restoration tool.

 

[binarydad]

Turn it off, held the wps button in while turning it on.
Hold the wps button in till it flashes then let go and let it boot up.
If that doesn't work, do the same procedure with the reset button except when it starts flashing log into 192.168.1.1 and use the cfe mini web server to upload the firmware or use the restoration tool.

I'll try that tonight and report back. I may have done this already, however. Thanks.

 

[joegreat]

My AC68U died the same way - not sure was broke, but it was gone.

 

[binarydad]

Turn it off, held the wps button in while turning it on.
Hold the wps button in till it flashes then let go and let it boot up.
If that doesn't work, do the same procedure with the reset button except when it starts flashing log into 192.168.1.1 and use the cfe mini web server to upload the firmware or use the restoration tool.

This worked! Thank you. Holding WPS didnt' work, but holding the reset button on the back DID work. I got to the mini web server, cleared the nvram, uploaded the latest V27E5, and it worked. So far those intermittent dips are no longer there and it's back to normal. Hopefully nothing else breaks. Thanks!