So I tried to follow the instructions pointed to from this forum to enter failsafe mode - but I have completely failed. Now at hour 6 of trying, I am highly suspicious that the pocket router reset button is not being looked at during boot properly and I'm certainly not like on many of the youtube videos and forum posts.
My boot sequence LEDs never "flash" until right at the end of the sequence when the outer green one flashes - but that appears to be too later. Until that Point I get -
1 Middle green for roughly a quarter of a second
1 Red Light solid half a second
1 Outer Green for perhaps half a second and then
1 Solid Red Light for perhaps 20 or more seconds
1 Outer Green for 0.5 secs
All three then light, sometimes the outer green or middle green flash
At that point I have a working system on 192.168.1.1 from my fixed address 192.168.1.2 computer on the LAN port that I can SSH to - but I don't have the password, of course - which is what i am trying to reset.
In desperation I have also tried Telnet -(both SSH and not) - but I get connection refused regardless of when I do it.
Pressing the button at assorted times during boot has odd effects like stopping the router completing boot (no response) but it never seems to do anything useful.
I tried monitoring with WireShark as the Internet suggested, but I never see the special UDP packets that OpenWRT is supposed to send out that read "Press reset now". In fact, I hardly see any traffic initiated from 192.168.1.1 until right at the end. Mostly I see my computer sending out "can anybody tell me who is on address x.x.x.x"?
So basically - I have a peeved user and family and nothing to show for a wasted evening. What is the secret of when to hold the button, how long to hold the button (some say quickly, some say 3 seconds, some say 10 seconds), is it a repeated pressing (some say yes), etc, etc for this particular bit of kit?
A virtual coffee to the one who can explain.

Adam