Manual Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting / FAQ

Real, verified answers — grounded in the Known Issues Ledger, live testing, and actual forum reports, not generic router-FAQ boilerplate. If something here doesn't match what you're seeing, it may be version-specific — check whether you're on a current build first.

"I saved a change and now I can't reach the router"

Before you do anything drastic: wait. Most network-affecting saves in Gargoyle — LAN VLAN Manager, WAN Multi-VLAN, and other changes that could sever your own access — go through a safe-apply auto-revert. The router gives you roughly a minute to confirm the change actually worked ("Keep these settings?"); if you never confirm (because, say, the new config locked you out), it automatically reverts to the last known-good configuration on its own. No action needed — just wait it out and try reconnecting.

Changing your LAN IP, or switching Gateway ↔ Bridge mode on the Basic Setup page, works differently: the router actually reboots and your browser has to follow it to a new address. That page polls automatically and can take up to a few minutes — a "please wait" message stays up the whole time. Don't power-cycle the router while this is happening.

If you assigned every port away from Default LAN on the VLAN Manager, the save is rejected outright before it ever applies — the page requires at least one port to stay on the Default LAN specifically so this can't happen. If you're still locked out after a VLAN save, it's more likely the inter-VLAN access matrix or a port's tagged-VLAN membership than the native-VLAN guardrail failing.

"I forgot the admin password" / "the router isn't answering at all"

• If the router still answers on the network, there's no way to recover the existing password — the Backup, Restore & Firmware Update page's Restore Default Configuration button resets everything (including the password) back to factory defaults, but you lose your configuration too. Back up first if you can still log in.
• If the router is completely unreachable (bad config, failed upgrade), Gargoyle doesn't change OpenWrt's standard failsafe boot recovery mechanism — holding the reset button for the reset-to-defaults window during power-on drops the device into a recovery mode you can reach at 192.168.1.1. The exact button-hold timing and LED pattern vary by device model, so check your specific hardware's documented reset procedure rather than assuming a universal number of seconds.

WiFi

WPA3 (SAE) fails to connect, especially on 5GHz

If you see "this network uses an older security standard" (Windows) or an authentication-required loop (Linux/Android) specifically with WPA3 SAE or WPA3/WPA2 mixed mode, and the router log shows a client associated immediately followed by disassociated with no further detail — this is a known real limitation on some Broadcom brcmfmac WiFi chips, not a Gargoyle configuration bug. Broadcom's onboard firmware handles part of the SAE/PMF handshake itself on these chips, and some firmware versions don't complete it correctly.

Before assuming it's your hardware, try WPA3 on the 2.4GHz band alone and confirm whether the same symptom shows up there too — this is the one check most reports of this problem skip, and it's the difference between "definitely this chip's firmware" and "something else is going on." If 2.4GHz also fails, it's very likely the same underlying driver limitation, not something specific to 5GHz. If your hardware hits this, WPA2 (or WPA3/WPA2 mixed mode, which falls back to a PSK handshake) is the practical workaround.

2.4GHz and 5GHz using different passwords

This is intentional — see Independent WiFi Encryption Per Band. Each band has its own Encryption/Password fields on Basic Setup; there's no requirement that they match.

"Bandwidth/Quotas/Restrictions aren't tracking some of my devices"

Check DHCP / Known Devices for a configured alternative gateway. Devices using it send their internet traffic through a different device entirely, bypassing this router's monitoring, quota enforcement, restrictions, and QoS completely — this is by design (see the warning shown when that option is enabled), not a bug in Bandwidth Monitoring or Quotas.

VPN

• OpenVPN client configs using TAP mode aren't supported — only TUN. If your provider only offers a TAP config, it won't import correctly.
• "Block All Non-VPN Traffic" (both OpenVPN and WireGuard client mode) is a deliberate tradeoff, not a bug: if the tunnel drops, you lose internet entirely rather than silently falling back to an unencrypted route. If you'd rather stay online when the VPN fails, switch to "Allow Non-VPN Traffic" instead.

Currently known open issues

Small, honest list of things that are genuinely still unfixed as of this writing (from the Known Issues Ledger) — most other functional bugs found during testing (a CIDR-format Router-IP bug, a first-boot save hang, a WireGuard save wiping manually-added peers, a Dynamic DNS save clobbering other tabs' changes, and a Known-Devices static-IP bug that could crash DNS/DHCP router-wide) have already been fixed and merged.

• Quotas page can throw an error depending on which page you visited right before it (Medium severity, open). If Quotas shows a blank page or a JavaScript error, navigate to it directly (e.g. reload the URL, or go there first after logging in) rather than clicking through from certain other pages.
• Captive Portal's Gateway Name can occasionally be reverted by a save made in another browser tab (Low severity, open). Narrow edge case — avoid editing Captive Portal settings in two tabs at once.

See also

• User Manual
• Known Issues Ledger — the maintained source this page draws from
• Report a bug