Time Capsule Powered Off, Won't Power Back On

elroySF... it's the power supply... the capacitors are charging. I testing mine again and you can hear the high pitch noise as this is happening and within about 30 seconds, it dies... There are several posts all over the iNET regarding this power supply issue... Just before mine died, the top was extremely HOT right about where the PS sits... this PS is crudely made and does not allow for adequate ventilation. There is also some concern that these were made with substandard electrolyte causing them to fail at high temps... I know this does not help, but I'm still reeling about an Apple product not living up to it's standards... I only wish it was an external supply, but that would not follow Apple's mantra of simple and sleek... ****, I'd settle for RELIABLE... I'm still hesitant to open the new TC... I'm banking that someone will figure this out soon...

Bought mine March 2008. I'm guessing that's 17 months ago as well. All lights went dead. No sign that it's working at all. HELPPP

Definitely looks like the March 2008 batch have a power supply problem.

I was swithering about what I think is the second hard drive failure in one of my 18-month-old iMacs when I lost connectivity and looked at my Time Capsule. No light. No joy. At first after I pulled the plug and put it back in it seemed the disk was turning but never a light. Sadly this was one of the ways I was backing up data from my iMac which is dying, I think. The Windows partition reports 27 Meg of bad sectors after a number of funky read errors on, that's right, backing stuff up! Sigh! I'm going to stop by the Apple store tomorrow. Just turned off watching the U.S. Open coverage and one more ad about Apple stuff 'just working' to see if anyone had a similar problem not imagining that they would. I bought this gadget in March '08.

Same thing happened to my 500GB Time Capsule this morning. Opened MacBook and it reported no network. Looked at TC & green lite was out. Power strip that it was plugged into was good, tried plugging TC directly into wall, no lite - dead. Search led me to this forum. Bought TC in Feb 2008, so 19 months of service before this happened. Cannot be a coincidence that so many people are seeing failures around the same time. Has all the symptoms of a loss of power supply, but I have not opened it or tested the power supply with a voltmeter yet. We need to get Apple to acknowledge this systemic problem and do something - we deserve to get more than a year and a half out of a backup device. Wanted to add my experience here to support the case.

I just thought I would add my response to this ever growing problem.
Everything with my Time Capsule was working fine until last night when my network went down as a result of my Time Capsule going dead. Exactly the same story as others in that I purchased it back in March 2008. It appears to be far more than coincidence that we are all having the same problem. Luckily I don't totally rely on my TC for keeping backups as I have other backups built into my network but I do use the modem capability to run my network. It will be interesting to see what Apple will do. I have bought a new one today but plan to keep the old one in case Apple decides to replace them. If it is due to substandard materials used hopefully they have found the problem and corrected it in the newer batches or we may all be back on this forum in 18 mos complaining of the same thing. Certainly doesn't help Apple's image regarding reliability and quality control.

Thought I'd chime in, too. My TC died last night 17-18 months after purchase. It's almost as if there is a little clock in there that tells it to stop working on schedule with this many of the same failure.

Aha!!! Looks like someone has a solution for those brave enough to try...

http://forums.mactalk.com.au/28/71270-time-capsule-dead-power-supply.html

I will be trying this as soon as he posts the instructions...

Wow... I LOVE the iNet!!! Here is a link to the PDF with PIX and instructions!!!

http://sites.google.com/site/lapastenague/a-deconstruction-of-routers-and-modems /TCRepair.pdf?attredirects=0

Found on this site:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1267631&p=2

KUDOS to REVs Per Min and matrix for this!!!

Also, more information here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2091667&start=75&tstart=0

Also, I have left some feedback with Apple... please do the same!!!

http://www.apple.com/feedback/timecapsule.html

You must be very lucky! Mine is dead after 14 months.
I dont think I will buy time capsule anymore. Just buy the WDC with a Belkin wifi router.
It works better.

My gen. 1 1TB TC purchased 3/2008 lost its power supply Sunday night. 18 months old, purchased from Apple online here in Sweden along with some software, but no computer so no possibility of including Applecare at time of purchase.

I called Apple support and explained the situation, emphasizing that I purchase Applecare whenever possible but that it was not possible in this case. They offered two options: 1) To retroactively include the TC on an existing Applecare contract, thus enabling my local service center to order a replacement unit, or 2) to invoke the Swedish Consumer Purchase Protection Law which specifies that products must be free from defects for at least 2 years from date of purchase.

Apple support preferred to go the AppleCare route, so we tracked down the S/N of the computer that has the most recent Applecare contract and tied the TC and connected the two devices. I did this while on the premises with my service center, so the service manager ordered the replacement TC as soon as I finished the call with Apple support. It should arrive from Holland tomorrow, Friday at the latest.

We only had backup files on the TC, so we didn't need to remove the HD to retrieve anything critical, but I will think twice about using it as anything other than a backup. Hopefully the gen. 2 replacement unit will be a bit more reliable.