Reset a router means to restore all data to factory settings. If there’s a problem with your home network, or if you want to change WiFi password, but you don’t remember router login password, the simplest way is to reset your router.
Hard reset a router
A hard reset is to reset your router by pushing reset button to make restore settings. This process will remove all customized configurations, which includes router login passwords, WiFi settings, WiFi password, Firewall rules, port forwarding rules, and DNS settings. So, before doing it, you’d better backup these settings.
Router hard reset steps:
Power on your router, find the Reset button on your router. The button may be on router’s back or bottom.
Find a toothpick, or a needle, paper clip which is small, push the Reset button for more than 10 seconds, wait until the lights on router flash.
Release the button, wait for several seconds, your router is good to go.
The most important point is wait for the lights flash, it means the resetting process is finished, another point is don’t unplug power cable in the process, it could damage your router’s hardware.
Soft reset a router
Soft reset a router means to reset your router in the console page, this is under software management, so it will take less damage comparing to hard reset if you don’t know how to hard reset a router. But it also requires you logged in to the router’s console page, if you forgot the login password, you’d better try hard reset.
Router soft reset steps:
Power on your router, connect it with your computer.
Login to the router’s console page(admin center), find the menu ‘Restore Factory Settings‘ or ‘Reset Router‘, which is something similar.
Click the button, you will be notified that all customized settings will be replaced by factory original settings.
If the customized settings are very important and you can’t remember them all, you’d better back them first.
The two different ways of resetting your router are actually very similar, one is to press the virtual reset button, the other is to click button in the software page. They could solve many problems that you don’t know how to fix, and the process will restore router’s default login IP address too, which could be 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 depending on the model. By the way, ‘Reset‘ differs with ‘Reboot‘, ‘Reboot’ means a power cycle of your router.