Once again, the old computer illiterate has a question for you computer savvy Ws. We use a Netgear Wireless-G router for the laptop at home. My son just brought home his new Apple laptop from school and wants to use the internet. I cannot figure out what the username and password are for this network, even though I thought I wrote them down.
Where can I find what this information is so that I can get him on the network or change the username and password so he can get on?
It sounds like you're saying you don't remember the password for your wireless encryption. If so, you're doing much better than a lot of people, who don't bother to enable the encryption.
You need to access the router options. http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/112 says your router IP address is either 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 . Type one of those into a browser window and hit enter, like you'd do with any other website. You're looking for a screen that asks you to login. If you don't get it with one address, try the other one. If neither one seems to work then we can have you do some digging on your computer to see what the gateway IP is.
If you left the default information, it's username admin and password password to login. If you were smart and changed this to something else, then I think you probably have to reset the router. I'm not going to say how to do that until I see whether someone else has a better way to do it, because resetting the router means it has to be setup to all the correct options again, and I'm not sure if we can walk you through that over the internet.
But if you do get into the router options, then you can follow along with http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/112 to get to the wireless options and either see what your current wireless password is, or change it to something else that you remember.
Assuming you have DHCP set up, and some modern windows,
Go to Start > Run > CMD
type in ipconfig /all
Look at the gateway you have assigned to your machine. That's probably the IP of your router. Try putting that in a web browser to see if you can access the web configuration page for your router.
Yes, Aaron, that does take me to the configuration page. The problem then becomes that it asks for the old password in order to change the password. I tried what I thought it was, but to no avail.
I think the best thing to do at this point is to reset your router.
There should be a button on the back of the router (near the ethernet ports) that allows you to reset the router to the default factory settings. You might need to use the tip of a pencil press it - and you usually have to restart your router while pressing it.
It will mean that you have to reconfigure your router if you've set up WPA or and port forwarding, but without the password/username it's probably a good idea to do this regardless.