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Forum Discussion
RBR50 will not factory reset nor can I connect in any way
Last sunday we had a quick power outage and we lost everything. My backup generator came on and everything came up, or so I thought. The router and Starlink, one 10 port netgear gb switch were on a s...
Nerfball wrote:
Somehow the Starlink device took over when the router failed, except it is very glitchy.
This is not likely.
If the router continues to broadcast the WiFi SSID, and the satellites continue to support connections, then the router is indeed continuing to function. The Starlink has not "taken over".
Factory Reset not working has appeared on the forum (very seldom). (Just recently there was a post about the 30-30-30 method being successful.)
Nerfball wrote:
One thing the instructions said was to turn the router off for at least 10 seconds and power it back on until the amber power LED flashed. That never happens. When my RBR50 comes up, it goes right to green. The only way I get an amber power LED is to hold the reset while it is booted up and at first it is solid, then after like 5 seconds it is flashing
This is not what the Factory Reset instructions specify. A regular "power on" does not turn amber and then begin to flash. Factory Reset calls for holding the Reset button until the Power LED turns amber and then begins to flash. Going directly to Green is what the router is supposed to do when powered up.
If there is a computer that can be connected to the router, either with Ethernet or over the WiFi name that is being broadcast, can you please try this:
Once the computer is connected to the router, determine what the "Gateway IP Address is". On Windows, this can be found by opening a command window and entering the command ipconfig /all. (Normally, one would expect the Gateway IP address to be 192.168.1.1.)
Then, open a web browser to http:// (whatever the gateway IP address is).
@Nerfball wrote:Somehow the Starlink device took over when the router failed, except it is very glitchy.
This is not likely.
If the router continues to broadcast the WiFi SSID, and the satellites continue to support connections, then the router is indeed continuing to function. The Starlink has not "taken over".
When the router is turned off and totally powered down and my SSID is still being broadcast, the only way for that to happen is for the satellite to hold a configuration, which it just may be doing. I can connect to the satellites but their configuration seems to be little to nothing directly. I remember setting the backhaul and so forth through the router initially.
In those instructions for restarting the router on step 9 seems to be plainly telling me to expect an amber flashing light which doesn't happen. Says it right there unless there is something more I read right through.
I have been working with computers since the Commodore64, I know how to get around windows better than most. For sure, this router is not resetting back to 192.168.1.1, but 192.168.1.250. Better than this is that was never an ip I used for my network anywhere including static devices because that was not my structure. I can ping it, but that is about it. Nothing can actually connect.
I didn't see this post in the middle
If the router continues to broadcast the WiFi SSID, and the satellites continue to support connections, then the router is indeed continuing to function. The Starlink has not "taken over".
When the router is 100% powered down, it is impossible to broadcast yet by backhauling with a cable to both satellites, the SSID I set on the router before still gets broadcasted by the satellites and ends up working. I can only guess that the setup from the router to the satellites holds even though I gave them static addresses from the beginning and they now accept the new network scheme.
That is what I meant by the Starlink system taking over the control. They were not set to dhcp but it seems they are now. Maybe when the router dropped, there is some sort of failsafe in the setup but I do not remember ever seeing it.
Again, I can get to the gui of the satellite but I have nothing to go on for how it looked before. I set the satellites up through the gui of the router in the beginning and never connected direct except the one time a satellite needed a re-flashed firmware.
Nerfball wrote:
In those instructions for restarting the router on step 9 seems to be plainly telling me to expect an amber flashing light which doesn't happen. Says it right there unless there is something more I read right through.
Thanks for providing the link. That is indeed what it says. Alas, I believe that is incorrect. When an RBR50 is powered up, the Power LED immediately turns green and stays green while the router goes through the startup process. (I just held an RBR50 in my hand, pressed the power switch, and watched the LED.) The only way to get the flashing amber LED is to press the Rest button when the router is already powered on.
My own personal experience is that the startup process includes a period of time when the router waits for a TFTP connection. If there is no connection, the router continues on with the process of loading firmware, initializing, etc. etc. which goes on for over two minutes.
I once bricked an RBR50 and found that using TFTP to flash firmware was a frustrating experience. Disconnecting the router and PC from everything else. Setting the PC to a static IP in the 192.168.1.x subnet. Getting TFTP ready to transfer. etc. etc. I failed five times and was ready to get out the hammer, then thought,"what else do I have to do right now?" On the sixth time, it took!
My feeling is that hitting "Send" even one second too soon will fail. Even one second too late will fail.
I never tried nmrpflash (https://github.com/jclehner/nmrpflash ) My sense is that this package may avoid the "timing issue", i.e. be more foolproof.
As an aside, there is another possible explanation for detecting a WiFi named "ORBI75". Every manufacturer of residential WiFi routers gives each one a unique name when it leaves the factory so that customers who happen to live next door to each other will not wind up with identical WiFi networks. Scan for nearby WiFi and notice that some will have names such as "ATT(*&%%", "Belkin^*&%", etc. Netgear makes the default WiFi name for these routers the letters "O-R-B-I" plus a two digit number. There may be a neighbor who also purchased an Orbi system.