If you, like me, owned a Netgear WNR854T router for more than 6 months, you are probably looking at a front panel with just the green power light on, desperately trying to connect to it. As a last resort you hit the interwebs to look for a fix which is when you realize that you probably should have read the reviews on amazon.com, buy.com or any other retailer. Yes my friend, you bought a piece of junk, your router is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This, is a late router! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! "THIS IS AN EX ROUTER!"

Mine failed after 12 months and 20 days which is, as the friendly Netgear Customer Support Representative reminded me, exactly 20 days past the warranty period. I filed a complaint with the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection but apparently is is perfectly legal in this fine country to sell any POS as long as it gets replaced if it fails in the warranty period, to which I replied "With the same POS?", yep, that's all perfectly fine, long live capitalism. I consulted a few lawyers (no shortage of those here) and they confirmed that this is acceptable business practice, probably not good for business in the long run, but business none the less. I followed this all up with a few F-bom riddled e-mails to Netgear but they wouldn't budge and I gave up. I was planning on taking the sledge hammer to it, Office Space style, but for some reason I never did, maybe I thought I would set a bad example for my kids or maybe I felt sorry for the router, who knows.

It has been more than a year now, my replacement router, a D-Link DIR-655 has been humming along without any hick ups whatsoever, it is much faster and more configurable, a fine piece of machinery. But I still cannot believe I have a bricked router in the house, I never got over it and haven't had the hart to toss it out. So in one last attempt before composting it, I decided to open the thing up and see if I could find what was wrong with it.

The first thing I did when I found it was to plug it in, maybe hopping that time would have healed it, but it hadn't. I found myself staring at that green light again, like I had over a year ago, first transfixed but very quickly the sledge hammer urge came over me again like a green haze at which point a recomposed myself and started focusing on the job at hand. I couldn't immediately find any screws, maybe I would have to user a hammer after all. When I turned the router upside down, a pair of stickers drew my attention and made me chuckle:



I presumed you have to rip these off, maybe there were screws under these stickers, so I did. No screws, but it became clear that the side panels on the router are held together by those plastic hooks you can see at the bottom and the sticker will get damaged if you remove the panels, hence voiding your warranty. Put your router flat on its side so that you can read the labels at the back above the ports (i.e. make sure it is not upside down), like so:



The side panel that is now on top is the panel you need to remove first (you'll see why later). Take a sharp tool (I used scissors but a small flat head screwdriver will do to) and start pushing in the (5) plastic hooks of the top side panel one by one while slowly lifting the side panel. When you push in the last one, the panel should pop right off. There are a few internal plastic hooks along the other sides, again you can use a long tool to pry those loose while you pull, I just pulled and it came off without damaging any of those other hooks. You should be looking at something like this now:



You can clearly see the wireless card with 3 cables coming out of it. Those are the antennas and you see they run to the other panel into 3 tubes. This is why you cannot remove the other side panel first, it's kinda attached to the wireless card. It seems that the wireless card is attached to a IDE port and can be removed. As I do not need wireless on this router, I decided to start with that and see what would happen if I remove it. Start by disconnecting the 3 wires from the card, just pull them off, its a snap-on connection. You can now safely pull the other side panel off.



Next you need to remove the 2 white plastic pins in the corners opposite the IDE port that pin the card to the motherboard. I found it easiest to start from the underside of the motherboard, just squeeze them and push them through the holes, the wirless card will bend but it is very flexible. Then bend the card even further and push the pins from the other side (on the wireless card) all the way through. Alternatively, you can just clip the pins, we won't need them anymore anyway.

Now for the scary bit, removing the card from the IDE port. Unfortuntately it seems that it is soldered onto the motherboard. I took my chances and just ripped it loose (finally some revenge), pulling hard away from the port. The plastic sides broke off, but no real damage was done, the card came out clean, as did the motherboard. Here is the result, router with spare parts:



I thought after this major surgery I would give my router another try and I plugged the power in (be careful not to touch any components when you do this OR better, put the panels back before you try this). It had been so long since I last used it that I did't remember the boot sequence anymore. As a result, my first reaction was disappointment, that all to familiar green light was staring back at me. But then, it suddenly started flickering and turned orange and then I remembered that this is how it boots. Hurray, it's alive, ALIVE! I plugged in my internet connection and poof, the internet light started flickering.

So there you have it, by removing your wireless card you can revive your WNR854T router from the dreaded Green Ring of Death (GROD). You will loose the wireless capabilities, but at least it's not bricked.

Mission Accomplished.

In the next article I will explain how to use this router as a second router in your LAN.