Peplink Balance 305 boot issue

It also happened to my 380. It’s cold swap unit that was working fine before for couple of months. It was shut down a month ago and when tried to boot it to update its config it wouldn’t boot. Console does not show anything either. Tried to replace ram module with no change. CF card is readable in USB reader so it’s not that either.

Connect a console cable and you will likely see it is stuck at a screen saying the config is incorrect. If you press f1 or f2 then press enter (or enter the wrong password 3 times) the device should boot and will work until the next reboot. The front panel will continue to show blocks

The cr 2032 battery has most likely died and so the BIOS config is lost. Replacing the battery won’t help though as you would need to enter the bios and save it for it to work correctly again.

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Mine console does not show anything. It’s completely blank without any activity.

check the settings in putty, 115200 for the port speed. Power the device up after connecting the console. If nothing still shows then I would guess that the device is completely fried.

I got 2 other 380 devices and they show console just fine so unfortunately my settings are correct and my unit is dead.

FYI try my suggestion here:

I also have the same problem with the 305 device that has run out of battery, so what do we do?
And I can not understand PEPLINK in terms of reactions or non-reactions, this is what will make me think twice whether to buy PEPLINK devices in the future.
Can not understand why there are no manuals of the manufacturer here How to fix such problems?
Or at least provide us with tools to deal with such issues, what should a system person who encounters such an issue do?
In my opinion, there is a point in a flaw in reliability

@Tzur, it sounds like a hardware issue. Please open a ticket to proceed RMA.

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No its not!

Can you get it to boot using the serial cable method mentioned above?

Connect a console cable and you will likely see it is stuck at a screen saying the config is incorrect. If you press f1 or f2 then press enter (or enter the wrong password 3 times) the device should boot and will work until the next reboot. The front panel will continue to show blocks

The cr 2032 battery has most likely died and so the BIOS config is lost. Replacing the battery won’t help though as you would need to enter the bios and save it for it to work correctly again.

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Which Peplink devices use a battery?

Had a 305, created a support ticket. It was out of warranty, so they told me to just buy a new one. Bought one off eBay to get things back up and running. It also has a black screen, but was working before being shipped 2 days ago. I have 4 other Peplink routers running at other locations, but really starting to worry about reliability with these. Especially after reading all these posts.

Out of interest can you get it to boot using the method I describe above? If the cmos battery has been dislodged in transport then it could be that the clock has been reset. If you can get it to boot using the serial cable it should work fine till you next need to reboot it (where you will have to repeat the same process).

Almost all the devices (peplink, pepwave) have a cmos battery but I have only seen the issue on the on the older (6.3.x) 380, 305 and the 580 where the bios requires user intervention after the battery dies and the config is lost.

Unfortunately the bios is password locked (which isn’t reset on battery failure) and so it isn’t possible to go in and save the settings or re-activate the display on the front of the device.

To be honest the nice thing would be if Peplink shared the bios password, I don’t imagine it carries any real risk as I imagine the password is different on these older devices to the newer ones.

The older 710’s use a different bios it would appear and don’t require user intervention when the battery dies. I don’t know about the 1350 or 2500.

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This may be relevant to some of you, and may not. But I just had the same issue with a 380 Hw3, so well out of warranty. In my case, I got the standard beep noise on power up, as you would from an old computer. So, I figured that it is actually working, but it does not start the boot sequence. As there are no easy way to connect a monitor to see what is actually going on, I remember from the old days, that on a bios-halt, you had to press a key on the keyboard for it to continue booting. So I connected a keyboard to the usb connector in the front, waited until after the start-up beep (and then some), then I pressed F1-key. And, magically it started booting. I suspect this started happening due to a completely drained battery.

Please let me know if this worked for some of you. Best of luck.

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Awesome great diagnosis. Did you try to connect up to the console port to see if the console displayed any warnings?

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Yes I did, nothing, which I guess is logical, since nothing is running on the machine at that stage.

if you have the console connected before powering on the router you will see the bios prompt to press f1 to continue or f2 to enter the bios. There is a password though if you press f2.

Might have to have a play at some point and see if booting a hirens bootcd will allow the password to be cleared or recovered.

I just had a 305 stop working. Oddly enough It lasted about 3 years just like a previous one i had. Right after 3 years it would stop working with no access what so ever it would just freeze.
I have not tried troubleshooting any further. A reboot does get it working for about 15 minutes after that it stops working again with all link lights blinking as normal.

Last time it happened i contacted the company that sold it to me and they said it was not worth repairing it since it was out of warranty i had no choice but to buy a new one. Now the same thing happen i think someone from Peplink should give a proper answer for this hardware failure. Hopefully it will help others.

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Have we not been given the option of such a reset in the CLI commands? As is possible for example in cisco switches or routers ?