Router Won't Complete Setup

[#1]

OK. I'm trying to troubleshoot remotely by phone here here for my 80 year old mother, whose just switched to Plus.net [activation date supposedly today] and who can't get online. Here are the symptoms: 

[BTW She's got the 2704n Router]

* Router's power and Broadband lights are steady green

* Router WiFi and Internet lights are flashing green

* When she tries to browse the internet, the connection times out. The browser never redirects her to the "Broadband Setup - Information Needed" Easy Setup page as I believe is meant to happen.

* She's able to connect to the router admin page at 192.168.1.254. This shows router is 'Connected' but using the tr069@plusdsl.net username which, from what I understand, is the 'username' that will be there til Easy Setup has completed.

* I was going to try and talk her through manually entering her account info to get past Easy Setup not 'kicking in' but the supplied router password is not working, so she can't change any of the settings.  

* Network settings on her laptop are correctly showing the router IP [192.168.1.254] subnet mask [255.255.255.0] and her own assigned IP address [192.1.8.1.1 when connected to router by WiFi. 192.168.1.2 when connected to router by ethernet]. Renewing DHCP lease reloads these same IPs

* Thinking that, pre-setup,  the router probably uses a default password along with the default tr069@plusdsl.net username, I got her to try the usual suspects; 'admin' and leaving it blank, but those didn't work either. 

* I've also had her reset the router by holding the reset button in for 7 secs. It didn't make any difference.

So, I'm kind of stuck here. She's not the most computer literate person in the world and I'm trying to tech support this by phone from the other end of the country. So it's a bit of a nightmare. But from what I've talked her through and based on getting her phtograph what's on screen and SMS me the pics [see attached], everything seems to be set up OK. It's just that, for whatever reason, this dammed Easy Setup page is not loading and neither the supplied router password [or obvious defaults] work to access the router admin.

Any ideas anyone?

One other small thing which may or may not relate to these problems:

When she first plugged in her router today,  it initially wouldn't power on at all. Eventually she got it working by reseating the snap-on plug pins on the adaptor [which hadn't clicked in to place properly at first]. However, prior to that she'd rung Plus.net support and they'd arranged to have a new router sent out.

It seems unlikely, seeing as you can use your own hardware to connect to your plus.net account, but could plus.net somehow have 'blacklisted' the original router, so it would no longer be able to complete setup? In which case I suppose she'll just have to wait for its replacement to arrive.

[#2]

Having just switched to Plusnet myself today, don't assume that just because the phone has gone live that the broadband account is configured correctly yet.

In my case, I got a text to say that the phone was switched in the morning.  I tried connecting the router.  It connected to ADSL correctly, and would talk to plus.net web sites, but nothing else.  Any other sites got redirected to a "please wait" message.  I gave up and turned the router off.

Then another text came through telling me that my broadband was ready.  I turned the router back on, and it just worked.  I had internet back again.

[#3]

Hi there @madra first of all a warm welcome the community forums

If you private message me with their username I will be happy to check things out on her account for you.

[#4]

@Tagger --she has received a message saying her broadband is on and I've also logged into her account and it's showing as activated there too.

@Anoush --have PM'd you

I've just got her to try connecting to plus.net itself, as others have said that, before their BB was properly activated, they could visit plus.net sites and she says she can connect to plus. net "through it took a long time" but nowhere else.

So, it's looking increasingly like her broadband hasn't been activated, even though she's been notified that it has and that it's showing as activated on her account status page on plus.net

[#5]

Thank you for your private message

The account is definitely active and the order has completed. I've just refreshed the autosetup process. If you ask her to perform the factory reset once more, the router should connect to the internet.

If by any chance it still doesn't work, the next step would really be to manually setup the router with her username & password. When logging into the Basic Settings, you'd use the router password in the capitals letters, I'm assuming that was being used?

[#6]

Hi. Thanks for quick response. I've got her trying again now. Couldn't log in to router yesterday to enter settings manually as it wouldn't accept the router password. [I did get her to photo the label on the router and send me it, to make sure she was using the right one]. She was.

[#7]

Nope. Still the same as before. She's reset the router [again!] but her browser doesn't redirect to any setup page when she opens it. It just times out on any URL she puts in. And router won't accept the admin password, as provided both on the label on the back and the card sent by plus.net.

It's there a URL I could get her to enter, to access the setup page directly in the browser? Seeing as it's not redirecting automatically.

[#8]

OK. This might be completely random but, trawling these forums, I've just come across this other thread:

https://community.plus.net/t5/Broadband/Router-settings-login-broadband-speed/td-p/1359800

The poster there days that he switched from Sky broadband to plus.net [which is what my mum has just done] and his plus.net router also refused to accept the provided admin password. Coincidence? or have Sky left some markers on the line which are preventing plus.net from activating?

Spurious, I know, as the router password should be embedded in the hardware and not have anything to do with the phone line or anything else. But I'm really clutching at straws here, as this seems insoluble. Her router isn't doing auto-setup and won't accept the provided for password to allow us to set it up manually. So where do we go from here?

[#9]

Hmm. I don't see how another provider can affect the ability of being able to login to the router.

It's usually a problem with either the wrong password being used (which shouldn't be the case if she's tried a few times/double checked it), or a faulty router. Fingers crossed the new router doesn't take long to arrive.

[#10]

Hmm. I don't see how another provider can affect the ability of being able to login to the router...

Me neither. But we've definitely reached the "clutching at straws" stage now.

I can see from her account details that the new router is marked as having dispatched. So I'll tell her to hang fire til that arrives and then try again.

Cheers for trying to help.

[#11 · Accepted solution]

Good news!

Just had an SMS from the mammy saying her new router had arrived [thumbs up to Plus.net for getting it delivered to Ireland in one day].  

So she plugged it in and, after leaving it for 15 mins to do its thing, and me talking her through adding the new router to her WiFi connection menu, she now has internet again.

So it actually was a dud router after all and not my mum's terminal Luddism that was to blame.  

Oddly, according to her, the new router still won't accept the admin password [and, yes, I did check she was using the new admin password that came with the new router]. But that's no biggie. At least she's online again and I can wait til I next visit her to twiddle the router settings.

[#12]

Awesome, that's good to hear she's back up and running. Thanks for letting us know.