Why is resetting a router to its factory settings the first option?

I agree 100% However, many of the people asking these questions have no clue on how to investigate wifi problems, and many of the people giving answers do not have either the time or knowledge to describe a proper diagnosis (most of us could diagnose it, but just can't be bothered to spend a lot of time on it). On top of that, many questions are vague, not much to go on. Thus, the simplest "solution" is to reset the router. However, those answers fail to explain that everything has to be re-configured, including the wifi, and all laptops probably have to delete existing wifi profiles and create new ones. Thus that simple answer "reset" ends up being just as much work as diagnosing the original problem in the first place.

Most people that know networking have their router settings saved in a local file. Thus, it is easy for us to do a full "reset", and simply restore our configurations. But, 99% of the people out there don't do that either (just like most people do not do system backups)

All we can do is sigh, shrug our shoulders and hope some basic advice from us it taken before the one answer that says "reset" is followed...

Finally, I think that a lot of those "reset" answers are simple frustration of questions that are vague, maybe even pretending to be the router owner, but in reality are "stealing" the wifi from a neighbor. When questions state they do not know the admin password (who configured it in the first place??), or do not know anything about the router, that "reset" answer just puts the onus on the question asker to go find the owner of the router, and let them fix the issue (getting the owner/admin to fix it would be a better answer than "reset")

I think it is an easy way for the router company to try to get out of having to provide customer support to people who might just hit the first button, which would address most all issues, especially for stupid people, which seem to grow in population every year that passes (just look at the popularity of "reality tv" or the reason "TLC" Channel' only lets me "Learn" about little midget families and other garbage instead of LEARNING something from the interesting and educational DOCUMENTARIES they USED to be famous for! UGH).. sometimes the things our peers make popular only confirm my worst fears that our country is going to hec in a handbag because it is full of brain dead idiots :-(

SO.. if you worked in the customer service dept. of the router company, you might try to avoid having to talk to the hoards of people who made "keeping up with Kardashian" popular (Name intentionally misspelled out of disrespect) and make their router such that maybe they will chose, either accidentally or on purpose, to reset to factory default instead of calling you because their router became unplugged.

Also; Wow, Woodworking tools certainly have become advanced since I was into cabinet and custom furniture making.. Routers are now connecting to the internet? Neat! Although I cannot imagine someone needing the internet to put a nice edge on a piece of wood...*See what I mean! Even I have been made STUPID!* :-P

JK Good luck on finding out the REAL answer.. which a few here are pretty good.

But yea, I DO indeed agree with you, which seemed to be a part of the question you were asking.

Be groovy,

Perry in FL

Absolutely agree, BUT!...

The conversation often goes:

"My WiFi is running slowly."

- Have you tried setting the router on different channels.

"How do you do that?"

- Explain how to log in to the router as an administrator.

"I don't know my admin password"

- Explain where to find the password.

"OK. Done that, now nothing works".

- What did you actually do?

"well it didn't do anything, so I retried, and now I cant do anything".

- "Use a pin to reset the router".

So the "Reset the router" is needed anyway - so why not start off with that solution!!

It should be one of the last things to try if you know what you're doing, but you've got to write to the audience.

If people are asking on Y!A, odds are they're not terribly technical. Resetting the router like that is simple, probably does't affect any current settings (since they probably haven't changed any), and usually works.

You are correct, rebooting the router can help many issues but resetting is the last option.

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