how do I restore a WEP key after restoring my hard drive?

I have a Netgear wireless router. When I restored the hard drive on my laptop I cannot connect to the router without re-entering the the WEP number. Netgear wants 24$ to answer my question!!

William K2010-12-28T09:14:00Z

Favorite Answer

Hi,
why pay when you can just do this for FREE ???

do this first :-
reboot your system
in windows press "Windows key + break"
select hardware
check your WLAN drivers are working correctly (this is the main cause of NO connections)

so now your wlan connections are running

do this :-
go into setting
make sure your connect is DHCP (so your IP is auto from your ISP)

then just reset your router back to factory setting by pressing the reset key

look for the default WEP setting (sticker on the bottom of your router etc)

use this as your key

"Bingo" hope this helps you

set to DHCP so

Dan d2010-12-28T17:09:36Z

Man that's a rip off. (and a good reason to purchase D-Link products because they have free lifetime support). Go to the netgear website and download the manual for your router. In that doc there is how to reset it (usually a pinhole on the router that you press and hold with a paperclip for a few seconds). This resets your entire network!
You will need to reconfigure everything after doing this. Once that is done, write down your WEP or WPA code so that if you add something to your network you wont have to go through this again.

If you can get in to your router, then you can reset your WEP from the GUI. This will save you the complete resetup of your network. (again downloading the manual will help with this).

Good luck