Ok, I'm about to tear my hair out. While I was in the hospital last year, my router in my dental office died, and I had to have a local IT guy come out and replace it. I gave him the password and had him duplicate all the existing settings for the new Cisco EA3500 router.
Fast forward a year later, I just discovered the roach motel next door has piggybacked a Netgear expander on to my public WiFi network! So now I'm trying to login to my router and block that stupid expander, but my password doesn't work!!! The only thing I can think of is that the IT guy did not type in my old password exactly like the old one (it was a 14 character password that included upper and lower case letters). They claim they used the exact same password, but clearly they did not.
So, I know I can reset the stupid thing, but I have spent HOURS and HOURS over the years tweaking my little office network so certain employees/MAC addresses can access (or not access) parts of my network or Internet. In hindsight I should have specifically told the IT guy to save the config file after he got it all set up, then I could just reset the router and import the settings.
I obviously have physical access to the router. Is there a way to determine the password without a brute force attack? I have tried every combination of the old password I can think of with no luck. I am just sick at the idea of having to go back and set this thing up again from scratch.
Any ideas?
Best Answer
Try truncating. First 13, first 12, first 11, first 10 characters of the 14 character password.
and, of course, try "admin" (groan)