Asus RT-AC66U Broken Power Button Repairs

One of the wifi routers knocked out today for no apparent reason. I tried to ping the router and it’s unavailable.

Looking at the Asus RT-AC66U I don’t see a power light on. I press the power button and it seems to move down but does not stay in place.

A quick search reveals that this is an extremely common occurrence on Asus routers in this era. Thanks to snbforums.com for this one.

I wanted a quick and dirty fix to get this thing powered back on again.

• Remove the four rubber feet.
• Remove the four Phillips screws under the rubber feet.
• Use a plastic prying tool to remove the cover. If you break the tabs it doesn’t matter as the previous screws will hold it in place.
• Remove the little U shape metal clip that holds the spring.
• Remove the spring.
• Add the black push button.
• Assemble the router.
• The power switch stays in the ON position (and you can no longer turn the router OFF other than by removing the power supply).
• I simply put some black electrical tape of the power button so it’ll never fall out.

The power switch once opened was a blue stemmed version that failed.

I purchased two of these in 2015 so it seems to be a matter of time before the other one goes. These were certainly not cheap either.

Poor quality control here Asus. I’ve toggled the power switch a handful of times during the entire lifespan. This is an embarrassing failure point.