Genuine question - Why is the recommended ‘reset to factory settings’ so complicated?

[JimbobJay]

Genuine question here, not trying to be snarky, but why is the process of resetting ASUS router to factory defaults often recommended on this forum so weirdly complicated? I often see recommendations of clearing the JFFS partition, unplugging everything for 15 minutes, resetting to factory defaults, wait 15 minutes, reset to defaults again, wait 20 minutes, set up from scratch with none of the previous usernames, passwords or SSIDs as before, restart, wait 32.5 minutes, etc etc

I’m of course being slightly facetious and exaggerating, but I think you get my point. It all seems so weirdly complicated and almost OCD, and I’ve yet to read any actual firm evidence that this whole rigamarole is backed up by any factual benefits. Is it all just anecdotal, or is there a real reason ASUS routers need a whole song and dance performed when resetting to defaults? I’m genuinely curious as I’ve never come across such a complicated process when being asked to reset devices to factory defaults before, and I especially don’t understand why it’s recommended to change the SSID and not re-use the same usernames and passwords as before the reset. Do ASUS devices have a confirmed and known buggy reset that doesn‘t actually clear its memory? I sometimes wonder if soon when resetting to defaults, it’ll be recommended to go outside and perform a rain dance and then make a 17.5 minute sacrifice to the LAN Gods

 

[ATLga]

Genuine question here, not trying to be snarky, but why is the process of resetting ASUS router to factory defaults often recommended on this forum so weirdly complicated? I often see recommendations of clearing the JFFS partition, unplugging everything for 15 minutes, resetting to factory defaults, wait 15 minutes, reset to defaults again, wait 20 minutes, set up from scratch with none of the previous usernames, passwords or SSIDs as before, restart, wait 32.5 minutes, etc etc

I’m of course being slightly facetious and exaggerating, but I think you get my point. It all seems so weirdly complicated and almost OCD, and I’ve yet to read any actual firm evidence that this whole rigamarole is backed up by any factual benefits. Is it all just anecdotal, or is there a real reason ASUS routers need a whole song and dance performed when resetting to defaults? I’m genuinely curious as I’ve never come across such a complicated process when being asked to reset devices to factory defaults before, and I especially don’t understand why it’s recommended to change the SSID and not re-use the same usernames and passwords as before the reset. Do ASUS devices have a confirmed and known buggy reset that doesn‘t actually clear its memory? I sometimes wonder if soon when resetting to defaults, it’ll be recommended to go outside and perform a rain dance and then make a 17.5 minute sacrifice to the LAN Gods

Depends on who's advise you're reading.

My opinion, resetting from within the GUI and then the Administration sidebar option, Then the tab Restore/Save/Upload, then the option Factory Default and making sure the checkbox IS Checked for "Initialize All Settings..." This is more than sufficient without jumping through a thousand hoops and taking all day to reset your router.

I've used the WPS once when something happened and I got locked out. Otherwise, the GUI method works as intended.

 

[JimbobJay]

Well I didn’t want to call any individuals out specifically because I didn’t want to come across as combative. I’m just genuinely curious if there is a known issue with just doing a regular reset with ‘initialize all settings’ on ASUS routers. Because I agree, I don’t want to devote a whole day to resetting my router if it has issues. But I’ve seen it crop up multiple times in the number of years I’ve been browsing this forum. I think there’s a thread called M&M’s Setup Guide that details it? This post by L&LD is another recent example I came across. But it just seems to be some kind of generally accepted community wisdom that this is what is required when sh*t hits the fan, and so I was just wondering if anyone knew how it came about?

I’m especially curious about whether there is a known technical reason why re-using the same SSID could cause issues from one router configuration to remain on a new config?

 

[bbunge]

Asus recommend Hard Factory reset is not complicated. Look it up. Google is your friend.

OK here is the link. https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1039074/

 

[leerees]

Genuine question here, not trying to be snarky, but why is the process of resetting ASUS router to factory defaults often recommended on this forum so weirdly complicated? I often see recommendations of clearing the JFFS partition, unplugging everything for 15 minutes, resetting to factory defaults, wait 15 minutes, reset to defaults again, wait 20 minutes, set up from scratch with none of the previous usernames, passwords or SSIDs as before, restart, wait 32.5 minutes, etc etc

I’m of course being slightly facetious and exaggerating, but I think you get my point. It all seems so weirdly complicated and almost OCD, and I’ve yet to read any actual firm evidence that this whole rigamarole is backed up by any factual benefits. Is it all just anecdotal, or is there a real reason ASUS routers need a whole song and dance performed when resetting to defaults? I’m genuinely curious as I’ve never come across such a complicated process when being asked to reset devices to factory defaults before, and I especially don’t understand why it’s recommended to change the SSID and not re-use the same usernames and passwords as before the reset. Do ASUS devices have a confirmed and known buggy reset that doesn‘t actually clear its memory? I sometimes wonder if soon when resetting to defaults, it’ll be recommended to go outside and perform a rain dance and then make a 17.5 minute sacrifice to the LAN Gods

Hold down the WPS button and power on the router, that's all you need to do.

 

[JimbobJay]

Asus recommend Hard Factory reset is not complicated. Look it up. Google is your friend.

Thanks, but I don’t think you understood my question. I’m aware of the traditional recommended Hard Factory reset, and that is the one I’d much prefer doing.

But my question was not how to reset - my question is why a much more complicated process is often seen recommended on the Merlin forums. I linked to one such example in my above post, but I’ve seen it many times over the years and was curious about it.

 

[thiggins]

To answer your question directly. It's because it's what @L&LD recommends and he is a frequent contributor to SNBForums.

Just ask him directly.

 

[Gravityz]

Thanks, but I don’t think you understood my question. I’m aware of the traditional recommended Hard Factory reset, and that is the one I’d much prefer doing.

But my question was not how to reset - my question is why a much more complicated process is often seen recommended on the Merlin forums. I linked to one such example in my above post, but I’ve seen it many times over the years and was curious about it.

maybee because those examples go back to a time when resetting was not so simple and flashing different firmware versions (Like Tomato, Merlin) require a different, NON ASUS reset


You know how to hard treset it the easy way(WPS button) and how to reset it the complicated way.
The reasons behind it will not give you anything.

ASUS firmware, go with the Asus reset
other firmware, go with the other firmware specified reset

there are a lot of smart people on this forum so if they advice something because they have real life experience with it i tend to believe them instead of figuring out for myself why things are what they are.

 

[dave14305]

The whole SSID changeover is to ensure that wireless clients aren’t remembering something bad from the previous SSID.

My opinion is that L&LD’s method works well for beginners or novices because it leaves very little to chance. More advanced users may raise eyebrows at some of the steps, but most of the people asking for help won’t be advanced users.

 

[JacquesR]

My opinion is that L&LD’s method works well for beginners or novices because it leaves very little to chance. More advanced users may raise eyebrows at some of the steps, but most of the people asking for help won’t be advanced users.

Exactly this. Many of the steps will be unnecessary if you already know what you're doing (like the multiple reboots, or the waiting for the router to "settle"), but it's a way to eliminate all possible confounding variables, e.g. someone trying to log in while the router is still completing startup after a wipe, and getting worried when things don't seem to be working.

 

[Sky1111]

From work experience the most reliable way to flash firmware and reset all the settings is to use Dediprog; that is a bulletproof method and it provides consistent results. Unfortunately, this is not feasible here for many reasons, and may not be even suitable for ASUS routers.
But for sure, with Dediprog you won't need to do any voodoo magic or shaman dances to hard reset the router firmware.

 

[JimbobJay]

Exactly this. Many of the steps will be unnecessary if you already know what you're doing (like the multiple reboots, or the waiting for the router to "settle"), but it's a way to eliminate all possible confounding variables, e.g. someone trying to log in while the router is still completing startup after a wipe, and getting worried when things don't seem to be working.

OK, this makes sense! It was always that I was just curious when and where these steps started, as I could never find the origin, just the general recommendation being repeated. I wondered if once upon a time ASUS had some kind of serious issue that necessitated all the steps. But your answer makes a lot of sense. Thanks

 

[OzarkEdge]

Genuine question here, not trying to be snarky, but why is the process of resetting ASUS router to factory defaults often recommended on this forum so weirdly complicated? I often see recommendations of clearing the JFFS partition, unplugging everything for 15 minutes, resetting to factory defaults, wait 15 minutes, reset to defaults again, wait 20 minutes, set up from scratch with none of the previous usernames, passwords or SSIDs as before, restart, wait 32.5 minutes, etc etc

I’m of course being slightly facetious and exaggerating, but I think you get my point. It all seems so weirdly complicated and almost OCD, and I’ve yet to read any actual firm evidence that this whole rigamarole is backed up by any factual benefits. Is it all just anecdotal, or is there a real reason ASUS routers need a whole song and dance performed when resetting to defaults? I’m genuinely curious as I’ve never come across such a complicated process when being asked to reset devices to factory defaults before, and I especially don’t understand why it’s recommended to change the SSID and not re-use the same usernames and passwords as before the reset. Do ASUS devices have a confirmed and known buggy reset that doesn‘t actually clear its memory? I sometimes wonder if soon when resetting to defaults, it’ll be recommended to go outside and perform a rain dance and then make a 17.5 minute sacrifice to the LAN Gods

Suggested reading:
Reset FAQ
Reset Button/webUI Restore
WPS Button Hard Reset

I use webUI Restore w/Initialize to reset AiMesh router/root node firmware, and I remove AiMesh remote nodes from the AiMesh to automatically reset their firmware remotely... it's not complicated, but it is necessary and not what users want to do... reconfigure their router from scratch.

OE

 

[neil0311]

Genuine question here, not trying to be snarky, but why is the process of resetting ASUS router to factory defaults often recommended on this forum so weirdly complicated? I often see recommendations of clearing the JFFS partition, unplugging everything for 15 minutes, resetting to factory defaults, wait 15 minutes, reset to defaults again, wait 20 minutes, set up from scratch with none of the previous usernames, passwords or SSIDs as before, restart, wait 32.5 minutes, etc etc

I’m of course being slightly facetious and exaggerating, but I think you get my point. It all seems so weirdly complicated and almost OCD, and I’ve yet to read any actual firm evidence that this whole rigamarole is backed up by any factual benefits. Is it all just anecdotal, or is there a real reason ASUS routers need a whole song and dance performed when resetting to defaults? I’m genuinely curious as I’ve never come across such a complicated process when being asked to reset devices to factory defaults before, and I especially don’t understand why it’s recommended to change the SSID and not re-use the same usernames and passwords as before the reset. Do ASUS devices have a confirmed and known buggy reset that doesn‘t actually clear its memory? I sometimes wonder if soon when resetting to defaults, it’ll be recommended to go outside and perform a rain dance and then make a 17.5 minute sacrifice to the LAN Gods

I think there are always people who will recommend a “dance” which is often based on what may have been needed years ago to get around a long since defunct issue, but now is no longer required.

Asus puts a factory reset option in the GUI and that’s all I’ve personally every done.

 

[bluzfanmr1]

Apple devices, especially iPhones, tend to hold on to wireless connection details. When upgrading firmware versions, this can cause issues. If you start fresh with a new SSID, then usually there will be no issues. You can also "forget network" and recreate the connection and that will clear out any previous connection details that the iPhone doesn't want to forget. I have seen this work several times where there were problems and I just redo the connection on our Apple devices as part of the routine.

 

[MarkyPancake]

The most I've done in all my years using Asus routers (N66U, AC68U, AC86U) is perhaps two factory resets in a row, even then that's been very rare and I can't even remember when I last did this.

Following a single factory reset, I've never had any issues or performance degradation using previous SSIDs, passwords, more than eight character naming conventions, etc. I've always kept the router settings as basic as possible as well.

 

[Sky1111]

Apple devices, especially iPhones, tend to hold on to wireless connection details. When upgrading firmware versions, this can cause issues. If you start fresh with a new SSID, then usually there will be no issues. You can also "forget network" and recreate the connection and that will clear out any previous connection details that the iPhone doesn't want to forget. I have seen this work several times where there were problems and I just redo the connection on our Apple devices as part of the routine.

Absolutely confirmed. One of my Apple devices would not connect to my reflashed AX86u with SSID I was using for the last 15 years, and it connected to the same AP as soon as introduced a new SSID.
Since then I learned my lesson and after recent "nuke and pave" FW update on my routers, I created new SSIDs - while used my old impossible to retype password - and that worked, no issues of connecting any of 20+ devices (no, not all of them are iPhones )

 

[leerees]

Thanks, but I don’t think you understood my question. I’m aware of the traditional recommended Hard Factory reset, and that is the one I’d much prefer doing.

But my question was not how to reset - my question is why a much more complicated process is often seen recommended on the Merlin forums. I linked to one such example in my above post, but I’ve seen it many times over the years and was curious about it.

My bad. I didn't realise I was in the Merlin forums. I've only ever used the WPS method because this is what Asus recommends and it saves you from having to do all the other steps. I recently used this method on what was probably one of the worst firmwares they've released in years and it worked perfectly well.

 

[Sumsurfguy]

When I've had problems with my Apple devices after a flash I forget/remove the network on those devices and reboot, has always gotten rid of the issues in my experience, won't work without the reboot though, slightly less hassle if you have lots of non-apple devices to re-connect.

 

[L&LD]

Why M&M