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
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 ?
Hi all,
For all of those who’s match the famous Black square at boot time, I got the following response from Peplink support…
Root Cause
LPC chipset issue- Classified as hardware component degradation
that caused the communication error between CPU chipset and SERIRQ.
Containment Action : N/A
Regards,
HA
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I have update for this. Before throwing away my broken 380 I decided to give it last shot and used heat gun on CPU heat sink. Fan started to spin very fast and loud and display showed normal booting message and then went to normal “Login” screen but it was unresponsive to front buttons. Console shows ICK error message and does not proceed to regular console login screen.
edit: I suspect front display is hard coded somehow and does not actually display real status of device. After I turn device off by power switch and turn it back on display goes directly to “Login” message not black squares and the booting as it’s doing on working device. Also console does not show any boot progress (not even bios or bootloader message) even when display changes from black squares to booting after disconnecting and reconnecting power. And “Login” message shows with around 15 seconds delay after console shows logins screen so it seems that front display is coded to show booting message for fixed amount of time and then switch to “Login” message no matter if device actually finished booting or no.
My 305 just stoped working yesterday with the block display. Power cycle did not help.
I remembered that some computer motherboards would do this also. so i tried a hard reset. Unplug the unit, hold the power button for 10 seconds, release power button then plug back in. It ran for a couple of hours then died again. Sounded like a thermal issue, so i reseated the memory and checked the processor heat sink.
I found the thermal pad was dried up and no good. I cleaned it, put new thermal compound and reassembled. it has been running for 24 hours now without crashing. the display still shows blocks, but i now have time to get a new one in.
Hope this helps someone.
Update on a 380 HW5 with the same issue. The BIOS battery was dead, so I replaced this. You need a console connection using SSH to the unit. Putty is fine. Once you have this, you can bypass the setup by just pressing “F2” and “Enter” when it promts for password. The annoying this is that you have to do this every time the unit reboots or loses power. To fix this, you need to enter the BIOS and save the settings. Here is the thing, you also need the BIOS password set on the unit. I managed to get mine after a while, at some difficulty. Once you do, activate the paralell port to make the LCD display work. Save and exit, and it is now working normally again.
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I have 2 peplink 305 and have same this issue.
Any solution to fix it?
I think this device has a problem with quality