Brian On Software

NOTE: This trick might or might not work for all routers.  I currently have a DLink DIR-615 and this trick works just fine.  My guess is that it should work on your router too even though it might be a different model than mine…but then again I’m just guessing.

Requirements for this trick to work:

• Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser.  Unfortunately, this router contains javascript which disallows Internet Explorer to permit you to view the HTML code for the router’s configuration pages.
• Notepad++ installed and configured to be Firefox’s default HTML text editor.  Feel free to try your own text editor.  Keep in mind that I’ve only tried it with Notepad++ since that’s my default text editor.  Read this post to know how to configure Notepad++ to be Firefox’s default HTML text editor.  You basically have to provide Notepad++’s executable path as an input to a Firefox variable and you’re all set.

If you do not want to install these applications in your machine just to do this trick, simply download Altiris SVS which is a free software virtualization tool that allows you to install Windows applications in a virtual layer.  It’s a safer and more practical way to install Windows applications for temporary usage.

Here are the steps to follow in order to retrieve your ISP credentials from a DLink DIR-615 router (or other routers for that matter):

1. Log in the router’s configuration page as an administrator.  In my case, I just have to launch a Web browser and point it to http://192.168.0.1.  This IP address might be different for you.  In order to know your own gateway IP address, open a command prompt window (DOS), type ipconfig and press enter.  The IP address corresponding to your router is the one associated with “Default Gateway“.
2. Go to the Setup section and click on Manual Internet Connection Setup (refer to Figure 1 and Figure 2). It’s okay if you have a different router than mine.   Just try to find the page where you can configure your ISP account information.
3. In the page where you can see your login name (see Figure 2), right-click on it and then click on View Page Source.  Here, we just want to view the HTML source of the page.  If the page doesn’t allow you to right-click on it, then you can either disable javascript on the browser and try again, or from your browser’s menu try to find the command that allows you to view the HTML code for the page.  If that still doesn’t work, then we’re going to be more brutal: copy the page’s URL in the clipboard (Ctrl+C), then launch Notepad++ and paste (Ctrl+V) the URL as a file path in the Open File window dialog.  That should do it.
4. Now that you can see the HTML code for that page, make a search for your username as it will be a faster way to find the location where your ISP credentials are located.  For example, in my case I will search for “Brian”.
5. Look around that search area for your password.  It should be displayed as clear text (refer to Figure 3).

Figure 1. Go to the Internet connection options page

Figure 2. This is the ISP connection page for my DLink DIR-615 router (you should be able to find a similar page in your router)

Figure 3. Make a search for your ISP username to easily locate the ISP account information area in the HTML code.  Then look around for your ISP password.