Troubleshooting Orbi Purple Light on Your Router or Satellite

There are a lot of light colors that your Orbi router and satellites shows on the LEDs. Orbi purple light is one of them.

Here, we provide a full guide for this mentioned Orbi purple light  its meaning, reasons, and how to solve it with the help of the tips and solutions below.

Meaning of Orbi Purple Light

Purple (sometimes looks magenta, depends on your eyes) basically means the router can’t connect to the internet. That’s it. The router itself is alive, powered, and running, but it’s not talking to your modem or it’s not getting a signal from your ISP.

Why You are Seeing Orbi Purple Light?

·       Your modem and Orbi aren’t playing nice. Maybe the modem didn’t hand out an IP.

·       The Orbi’s rebooted and hasn’t actually finished connecting.

·       The ISP is down (yep, it’s not always your fault).

·       Satellite is too far from the base, so it’s blinking purple while it’s like “hello?? anyone there??”

Solutions for Orbi Purple Light

Check your ISP first.
Quick test: plug a laptop straight into the modem. If you’ve got internet there, the Orbi’s the problem. If not, well… call your ISP and brace yourself.

Power cycle everything.
Old-school trick, but it works more often than not. Turn off the modem. Unplug the Orbi. Wait like 2–3 minutes (longer if you’re patient). Plug the modem back in, let it fully boot, then power up the Orbi. Sometimes the Orbi just needs to re-handshake with the modem.

Check the cables.
Sounds dumb, but a loose or bad Ethernet cable between modem and Orbi will throw that purple light at you. Swap it with another cable just to rule it out.

Reboot through the app.
If it’s still purple, open the Orbi app and try a restart from there. Weirdly, that fixed mine once when the physical reboot didn’t. you can also use this tip if you are getting trouble with orbi blinking white

Update the firmware.

Check your current firmware. Open a browser, go to orbilogin.com (or the router’s IP, usually 192.168.1.1). Log in. Default username is admin unless you changed it. On the main screen it’ll show your firmware version. Write it down. See if there’s an update. Easiest way: click Advanced > Administration > Firmware Update. Hit the “Check” button. If there’s a new one, it’ll tell you.

Do it automatically (if it works). If the “Update All” button actually runs, let it. Sometimes it does, sometimes it just hangs forever.

Manual route. Go to Netgear’s support site, search for your exact Orbi model. Download the firmware .zip, extract it. You’ll get a .img file. Back in the router’s firmware page, choose “Manual Update.” Point it at the .img file. Do the router first, then satellites. They don’t update all at once.

Factory reset (last resort).

·       Find the reset hole. It’s literally on the back of the router or satellite. Tiny pinhole. Looks like something you’d never touch unless you’re desperate (which you are).

·       Grab a paperclip or something skinny. Don’t try to jam a pen in there, it won’t work. I used a bent paperclip.

·       Hold it down. Push and hold that reset button for about 10 seconds. You’ll see the power light blink amber/red — that’s the sign it’s resetting. If you let go too early, nothing happens, and you’ll be annoyed.

·       Wait. After that, it’s going to reboot like its brand new out of the box. Lights will cycle, it’ll take a minute or two.

·       Re-setup time. This part sucks but there’s no shortcut. You’ll need the Orbi app or log into the Orbi admin login web interface (orbilogin.com).

·       From there, you go through the whole setup wizard again — create a new WiFi name, password, the usual.

Reconfiguration

1.      Plug the router back in first. Wait until that little LED does its rainbow thing and finally settles. If it stays red, you’ve got bigger issues. Mine eventually went white → blue → stable.

2.      Reconnect through the Orbi app. Download it again if you deleted it out of rage (I did). Open it, hit “Set up new system,” and just follow the prompts. It’ll walk you through picking your Wi-Fi name and password again.

3.      Don’t forget satellites. Once the router’s happy, plug the satellites back in. Hit the sync button on both router and satellite. They blink, handshake, and eventually turn blue (good) or amber (meh, weak signal).

4.      Test internet. Open a browser. If it loads without making you curse, you’re done. If not, reboot one more time. Orbi’s picky like that.