How to reset your Netgear ORBI Router Password

I’ve seen some seriously terrible user experiences in my time. Netgear’s ORBI LTE Router has got to be somewhere very high in the top ten list of shittest user experiences of this decade. The amount of time I’ve wasted getting this pathetic mess going is rather scary, yet I persevered. I’m as surprised as you are! I don’t want to bore you with the details, just put a quick note here to remind myself and anyone else out there close to going mental how to recover your lost ORBI Router password.

Option 1: Soft Reset

  • connect to your ORBI WiFi network (if you can)
  • navigate to orbilogin.com
  • the login dialogue should appear
  • hit cancel (yeah, who would have known)
  • a warning message comes up, asking you to enter your router’s serial number
  • answer the sequrity questions
  • add a new password (and remember it this time)

Netgear explains how to do this here.

Apparently that’s it! Or so you’d think… because the obvious flaw in this plan is that you have to login with a password to begin with, and if you don’t know the WiFi password, you don’t even get a chance to enter these steps to reset the admin password. That aside, I’ve tried the above several times and still can’t login, even with my shiny new password (which by the way cannot be the default one it says on the box, otherwise you’ll be asked to reset it yet again).

Option 2: Hard Reset

Thankfully we have another option, namely forcefully resetting this piece of #!@&%# so hard that it thinks we’ve been sent a brand new box from Amazon. Here’s how to do that.

  • power on the ORBI
  • find an iPhone SIM tool or a paperclip
  • find the super tiny hole next to the SIM slot that reads “reset”
  • whack in the paperclip and keep it pressed down for 5-10 seconds
  • watch the power light to the left of it, keep holding it down until it starts blinking

In my case this took about 7 seconds, at which point this terribly designed piece of junk restarts. When it wakes up a few minutes later, try reconnecting to its WiFi network (this time without the need for a password).

Good luck, you’re going to need it!

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