Back From the Dead: How I saved my netgear gs108 gigabit switch

Yesterday evening I noticed that our internet was not working. After checking a couple things on the laptop I went to the basement to check the DSL model and switch. All the lights on my Netgear GS108 gigabit switch were blinking about every second or so. I figured that all it needed was a power-cycle. But that didn't fix it.

A quick look at Google showed several other people had this problem, and it appeared to be bad capacitors. The switch is covered with a lifetime warranty, but sending it back would mean at least a week without the internet working. So I decided to follow this example and fix it myself.

The GS108 is a well built switch with a nice metal case, it comes apart easily using only a phillips screw driver. Here is the inside showing the faulty capacitors:

Only one of the capacitors had a bulging top, a teltale sign of failure. But I elected to replace both caps closest to the power supply because they were both the same type and size. The failed capacitors were 1000 micro farad, 6.3 V. I didn't have any that size, but I found some 2200 micro farad 6.3 V caps from an old power supply that I was able to salvage. The new caps are much larger, so they couldn't go directly on the board, so I added some short leads, wrapped them in electrical tape and folded them over.

Here is the finished product.

It is not pretty, but it works.