How To Quickly Perform a “Hard Reset” On a Wi-Fi Router

Please see IMPORTANT NOTES at bottom before reading through this.

On wi-fi routers, unplugging it and plugging it back in is not a hard reset because the router still “remembers” everything. In this context, “hard reset” means “reset the router to how it was originally when new”.

Here’s a short list of reasons why you’d want to perform a hard reset on a wi-fi router:

• You forgot the wi-fi administration password
• The router is set in such a way where even when directly connecting to it via a wire, you still can’t acquire an IP and therefore cannot administrate it
• You want a quick-and-dirty way to clear all the data in the router without having to go through each administration screen manually

I’m sure you can think of a few more, but you get the general idea.

On most consumer wi-fi routers, a hard reset can be performed on nearly all of them by simply holding the reset button for 10 seconds.

This is how the process works:

1. Take a pen and hold the reset button on the router.*
2. Wait for the router’s lights to all come on (similar to how a car starts with its dashboard lights when you start the engine).
3. Unplug the router, wait 10 seconds, then plug it back in.
4. Go to a command prompt in Windows, type ipconfig and press Enter.
5. The IP address next to Default Gateway is the administration IP address of the router. Type this IP address into the address bar of the browser to go to the administration program.
6. Depending on the router you may be prompted to enter a username and password. For the vast majority of routers it will either be admin/admin, admin/[no password], [no username]/admin or [no username]/[no password].**

* If all the lights on the router do not flash when you hold the reset button for 10 seconds, try it again. Sometimes you have to do it twice.

** If no combination of user/password works, go to Google and search for “[brand and model of router] manual”. The manual will tell you what the default user/pass is for the router.

IMPORTANT NOTES

This procedure is only recommended on a router that you bought. What this means is that if your wi-fi router was provided by your ISP (such as Verizon FiOS who provides their own custom routers to their customers), call the ISP for information on the router instead of trying to reset it yourself, because if you perform a hard reset on an ISP-provided router, you may have to wait several days before a technician can come to your home to reset it with your internet service. If you call in however, you can have your router reset properly in just minutes.