I managed to knock out my internet connection the other day. I had been troubled by a wireless modem that failed to connect automatically upon power up. I dug out the documentation on the wireless and found the CD with the wireless driver on it. And a bright red label reading Stop! Insert CD first!. I didn't remember doing that when I just plugged the modem into a new-to-me Dell Optiplex 900. So I tried it, stuck in the CD, and all sorts of things happened. And my internet connection went away.
Quite a bit of fiddling and running the Windows troubleshooters and clicking on every box on all the screens that showed up finally this morning got me to a screen that showed the router's password. All the wireless routers come with a factory password burned into their PROMS. I suppose the user can change the router password, but few of us do. Anyhow, the password, smoothprairie295, was misspelled. I fixed that and bingo, Internet came back. Dunno how the misspell got into Win 10, but while trying to get internet back I went to a lotta places and typed in a lotta stuff.
Anyhow, this is what I had to do to reach the password screen. You may want to do this when you bring home a new computer or want to get a house guest's computer to work on your internet.
Right Click on the network icon on the taskbar
Click on network and connections setting
Open Network to Internet Setting
Click on Change Adaptor Setting
Right click on your network device icon
Click on Status
Click on Wireless Properties
Click on the Security Tab
Click on Show Characters.
And now we are deep enough. Took me a long time to go this deep. Should you need to know your password, and you forgot to write it down, that's what you have to do to retrieve it from Windows.
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