Have apple airport utility... opened it... saw the time capsule... clicked on it... of course it wants a password... Need to start from scratch.
I know I'll be scrubbing all my time capsule backups that way. I had redundant backups so I'm safe data-wise. I just need to get this part of the redundancy back in place.
I understood that you can "see" the Time Capsule when you open AirPort Utility, and if you click on the Time Capsule you are asked for a password, which you do not have because it was lost / forgotten.
In this case, you are stuck, because you cannot access the configuration settings for the Time Capsule.
Follow the instructions that I provided, which will allow you to set up a new password during the new setup, so you will be able to access the settings on the Time Capsule. This won't take more than a few minutes.
Then......when you have the Time Capsule up and running again, post back for additional instructions if you want to erase the data on the hard drive and are not sure how to do this.
In other words, erasing the data on the hard drive is a completely separate operation from erasing the network settings and device password. If you thought that you could erase the network settings and erase the hard drive in one step, this is not correct.
I understood that you can "see" the Time Capsule when you open AirPort Utility, and if you click on the Time Capsule you are asked for a password, which you do not have because it was lost / forgotten.
In this case, you are stuck, because you cannot access the configuration settings for the Time Capsule.
Follow the instructions that I provided, which will allow you to set up a new password during the new setup, so you will be able to access the settings on the Time Capsule. This won't take more than a few minutes.
Then......when you have the Time Capsule up and running again, post back for additional instructions if you want to erase the data on the hard drive and are not sure how to do this.
In other words, erasing the data on the hard drive is a completely separate operation from erasing the network settings and device password. If you thought that you could erase the network settings and erase the hard drive in one step, this is not correct.
Hold in the reset button on the back of the Time Capsule for 7-8 seconds until the amber light on the front panel begins to blink rapidly to perform a Hard Reset.
Release the reset button and give the Time Capsule a minute to restart again to a slow, blinking amber light status.
Now you can set up the Time Capsule again.
The Hard Reset will not affect any of the data stored on the Time Capsule disk, it only erases the network settings on the Time Capsule.
hey bob,
I think my point was not clear.
The network seems to be ok... I can see it in Airport Utility... it is logging in that is not working since I lost the passwords and want to erase the data and start again.
WEIRD (and good) resetting somehow woke up my keychain's record of the password. I'm glad I checked to see if I could log into the disk... because there is the data I thought I'd lost available (not Time Machine data but data on the shared drive side of things.
Thanks for stepping through with me!
yellow flashing has begun!
Nice work, glad that you got things fixed.
Time Capsule running... but lost passwords... how to reset without logging in
