Netgear WNR3500Lv1/Reset-Debrick Pin Short Method
 | WARNING: Perform this pin short recovery at your own risk and only as a LAST RESORT, as it may damage your router. You should follow an alternative recovery guide before continuing; although you may still damage your router, they are more standard and significantly less risky methods. |
Restore NETGEAR Original Firmware – Shorting Flash Chip Pins
1. Download the original NETGEAR WNR3500L firmware (v1.0.2.26 as of this writing) and save the downloaded wnr3500l.CHK (or whatever other name you save the file as) file to your computer’s C:\ drive.
2. Connect a computer’s network cable to one of the four (4) router’s LAN interfaces.
3. Configure your computer’s network interface with the following address information:
IP address: 192.168.1.10 Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1
4. From your computer execute the following command:
PING -t 192.168.1.1
5. Power ON the router
The router will take 10-20 seconds to start. Once the router responds with a Reply from 192.168.1.1, short the pins as shown on the diagram below:
6. The router should start to continuously reply to PING or the power light will turn YELLOW and start to flash. Wait until the power light is no longer flashing YELLOW (YELLOW light remains steady ON) and power OFF the router.
7. From your computer execute the following command:
PING -t 192.168.1.1
8. Power ON the router
9. From the same directory where you saved the wnr3500l.CHK file, issue the following command:
tftp –i 192.168.1.1 put wnr3500l.chk
10. If the firmware upload to the router was successful, you will see a message from the Windows tftp.exe program something like “Successfully uploaded 5279802 Bytes in 6 seconds, 479982 Bytes/s”
The POWER light on the router will turn YELLOW and begin to flash indicating the router is writing the firmware to flash. Leave the router alone for about 5 minutes to complete the work. Once it is done it will restart. If the POWER light is green and the wireless light is BLUE on the router, then attempt to open your web browser to http://192.168.1.1/ after the router has been on for about one (1) minute.
11. You may need to try this procedure more than once if it does not work the first time. Also make sure to use the Netgear firmware and not third party such as DD-WRT.
To access the router management interface, the standard Netgear firmware username and password are admin and password respectively. These should be reset to your own as soon as possible.
