Help! Linksys Router not showing up after blackout

Hey Everybody

I need your help. My power was out for about 4 hours and when it came back on, none of the laptops in household detects my wireless router. It's a linksys WRT54GS. I tried resetting everything but nothing it's not showing up on my wireless networks.

Please Help!!

You may want to call linksys for help. If none of your other laptops see the router - perhaps it was damaged as a result of the blackout. Have you looked at the front panel? I'm not familiar with that model - but are there lights blinking?

You can always try to plug directly into the router into one of the LAN ports and see if anything is still working. Most of those routers have firmware that will flash error lights if something has failed. You should take a look at the manual - the troubleshooting section will tell you what lights to look for - assuming it's not right up front in the description of the panels.

I'm going to assume you've already tried the obvious, like pulling the power to the router, leaving it off for 30 seconds and powering it back on - but it still doesn't work.

If that's true, my next step would be to try a factory reset. Pull the power once again, but this time find the recessed reset button on the back. Press and hold it with a paper clip. Plug in the power while holding. Wait 30 seconds. Release the button.

The router should be at factory defaults and you should see it broadcasting. If it's not, the router may be toast and you should look at replacing it. The WRT54GS is an older model, and out of all of the variants on the WRT54G, it's not the best unit in terms of stability and reliability (The WRT54GL was much more reliable in my experience).

You should be able to pick up a D-Link DIR-655 for about $75 these days and it is FAR superior to even some of the high-end single band routers out there.

+1 on the advice.

FWIW I went thru 2 Linksys Routers (same model as yours) in 3 years before I switched to an AES Base Station 3 or 4 years ago.

Or - upgrade to the Linksys 4200 which I added to my network yesterday.