How to do MORE simple things in your Home Hub

Printing this article: if it does not page properly, print in sections or try latest Opera browser for Windows which seems to behave better.

May 2008
Some common problems and fixes in the BT Home Hub, in association with the guys at the
Home Hub Forum.

1. How to avoid paying BT callout fee.
2. How to de-register a hub phone handset
3. How to fully reset a BT Vision Box
4. How to get phone to work on Slave (Repeater) home hub
5. How to Un-install BT CD software
6. How to use Home Hub on BT Business line
7. How to change to WPA encryption
8. How to set MAC Address Filtering
9. How to reset the PC's IP address

More How-to's

Even more How-to's

Other Links

Hub Simple Troubleshooting

Home Hub (V1) Manual
New Home Hub (V1.5) Manual

1. How to avoid paying BT callout fee (a.k.a. "Clean Socket test")

Well there's no rocket science here. The important point is to eliminate your house phone extension wiring from the equation.
In order to see if your house wiring is affecting your service you should go to the master socket (the first white socket in the property with BT or Openreach printed on it.

This is the NTE5 master socket. House phone extensions are wired into the removeable lower part of the socket which the homeowner is allowed to remove and add extensions to.


Remove the lower half of the socket and let it hang. if you have hard wired extensions they will be connected to this removeable part.

Plug a BT ADSL filter into the socket in the remaining part of the socket still attached to the wall. Plug one phone into the filter, and the Home Hub's ADSL lead into the other socket in the filter.
Leave the socket like this for THREE DAYS. If you still have a problem, try another phone. If there's still no change report your findings to BT and consider calling out an engineer. If the problem goes away, or the speed increases significantly, you need to look at your house wiring, consider disconnecting the bellwire etc etc.

It's quite possible that your phone or filter is causing a problem, so if the problem does not go away, you should try another phone and/or another filter just to eliminate every possible cause before calling BT.

2. How to de-register a hub phone handset

It's questionable whether it is indeed necessary to de-register a handset (the phone that fits on the front of the home hub).
Personally I have registered the same handset to two hubs, and two hubs to the same handset without apparent problems, but if you intend to have the incorrectly registered hub or phone permanently within range of each other you might want to deregister the handset. It's also impossible to de-register the last remaining 1010 or 1020 handset on V1 and V1.5 hubs using the handset menu itself.


To force a de-reg (type 1010 or 1020 phones only)...
Firstly on the handset take a look at which button is the "Menu" button.
Take off the battery cover and remove one battery.
Hold in the Menu button and reinsert the battery.
After a few seconds the display will show "TEST MODE"
Do NOT press OK, but press "5"
The display will change to show "CLEAR SUB"
Hit OK and the handset will deregister, but the phone book will be retained.

You can also reset the 1010/1020 handset to default settings...
Go to Menu, navigate to Base Settings, click Default Settings.
This will not lose the phone book either.

To re-register see How to use an old Hubphone on V2 hub. which does not need a cradle either.

On Version 2 Hubs in Advanced settings, Telephony, Handsets you can de-register all handsets simultaneously - excellent new addition!
I currently have no idea how to force a dereg of 2.1 phones independantly of the V2 hub, but a full reset using the handset menu seems to be adequate.

3. How to fully reset a BT Vision Box

(Courtesy Ned Ludd Home Hub Forum)
A master reset or DR (disaster recovery) is done as follows.

NB - DOING THIS WILL DELETE ANY RECORDED PROGRAMMES

1. Remove the power cable from the rear
2. Press and hold in the down arrow and the ok button on the front of the box.
3. Power up the box with the above buttons pressed in.
4. After 10 seconds release the down and OK buttons.

The V Box will do a complete software down load, which could take between 20 and 30 mins.
The box will switch itself on and off a few times and at times it will appear nothing is happening (watch the hub, you will see the data lights flashing off and on), be patient, it is doing something.

You will see a message saying there is a problem and to call a 0845 number, whilst it displays this it also has a NR01 error code displayed, a greyed bar also moves across the bottom of the screen at least twice.
You will also get displayed a couple of cogs in the centre of the screen. This is all perfectly normal, just wait. It will do what it has to do.

After all this it will ask you to scan for channels.

5. How to the Un-install BT CD

The BT CD contains several things which can cause problems.

NB. The Yahoo Browser sometimes installs Yahoo Toolbar on your non-BT Internet Explorer which can cause problems with IE7. (Hub V2 is now supplied with IE7 version of BT browser so that is not so bad)
Removal of the Yahoo toolbar from IE7 should not be attempted. It should be sufficient to disable it in the IE7 toolbar options.

The CD also contains a Wireless Manager. This should manage your Wi-Fi signal from the Hub to the PC instead of the Windows one. However it can also cause conflict even when the option to use Windows manager instead has been selected. Hub version 2 has a new version but it still caused my XP machine to not connect.

The other software such as Desktop Help and Hub Manager are superfluous.

To Delete the software

Go to START - All Programs - then if there is a group of programs called BT (or similar) select the Uninstall Option.

Then go to Windows "Control Panel" and select "Add or Remove Programs" or similar in Vista, and look to see if any BT software still exists. If so hit the Uninstall or Remove option.

Finally go to My Computer, Explore the C:/Program Files folder and look for any folders beginning BT...
Look especially for the BT wifi manager Tray Icon C:\Program Files\btbb_wcm\McciTrayApp.exe
If you find this or any other BT folders delete them.

I did find that with the Hub V2 version I only needed to uninstall the BT wireless manager and the tray icon went as well.


Finally, if you know how, it's usually best to run a Registry Cleaner. Google for "CCleaner" for free, or purchase RegCleaner. Run the "Clean Registry" option to remove all final traces of BTs software.

In the absence of the software you need to know how to manage your BT environment. Using your normal web browser:-
For BT MAIL use http://www.bt.yahoo.com and click on Mail.
For BT Hub Admin use http://bthomehub.home

Set both of these in your Browser Favorites or Bookmarks.

6. How to use a Home hub on BT Business Broadband

The key to this is to change the DSL username and password.
The default for domestic broadband is bthomehub@btbroadband.com with a blank password. In 6.2.6.E onwards it can be changed in "Basic Config", but the hub must be disconnected from ADSL in order to do this. Put in your BT Business broadband name and password, and reconnect to your business broadband line.
If necessary hit the Connect button in the home page.
I have not tested this how-to, but it was contributed by Bramshot and Wilderness members of the Filesaveas.co.uk Home Hub forum.

7. How to change to WPA encryption

The reason for changing is that theoretically its possible to break WEP codes in 10 minutes if you have the right equipment and software.
You need to assess how likely that is, and how many of your immediate neighbours are likely hackers. Maybe you live in a high-rise with 20 neighbours you don't know.

Firstly in Hub Manager,go to Advanced Pages and Wireless Security, or Basic Config.
You will see s dot in the radio button next to "Use WEP Encryption"
Click on the radio button next to "Use WPA-PSK Encryption"
Then after a few seconds a blank box will appear with WPA-PSK Wireless Key:
Type in a phrase up to 64 characters like "i am not a number i am a free man who is number one"
REMEMBER if you used lower case or upper case and no punctuation.

Then hit "Apply" and leave the hub manager

You will lose wireless connection!

On the computer you need to change the properties of the wireless connection. Sometimes it's easier to delete the connection and start again, depending on which wireless manager you are using.

On VISTA windows wifi manager...
Remove the Ethernet Connection.
In Network and Sharing Center, in the blue panel on left click on Manage Wireless Networks.
Highlight the one you are trying to change and click on Remove
Go back to Network and Sharing Center, click on Set up a Connection or Network.
Select Connect to the Internet.
Select wireless
click Connect
Select your home hub
It will then sense it is WPA-PSK and ask for your new passkey.

8. How to set MAC Address Filtering

Normally I would suggest using WPA-PSK as a better safer encryption method . However Some older PC cards will not support WPA-PSK. Windows 2000 and earlier will not support WAP-PSK easily, and many Linux distributions are more trouble that it's worth, even in 2008, to get WPA-PSK working (I just loaded the very cream of Linux - Ububtu HardyHeron, and it took a lot of Googling to work around the bugs in that distro)

But simple WEP, although safe from the likes of you and me, is not safe from weekend warrior hackers looking for a challenge and a bit of free bandwidth for file "sharing", and who have the time and inclination to download WEP cracking software from the Internet.

MAC Address filtering is a way to put another hurdle in their way in addition to WEP encryption. MAC address filtering in many "normal" ADSL routers uses a simple table that you type in MAC addresses - but this is the BT Home Hub and as usual it ain't that straightforward. Nevertheless if you like duck shoot games you'll love this one.

Whether it's on V1 or V1.5 hubs the process seems to be the same.

Go into hub's advanced pages, Wireless Security.
Change "Allow New Stations" to New Stations are Allowed by registration
You will lose wifi contact to the hub.
Get ready to connect again using your PC
Press and hold the Wireless Association button for a few seconds til the Phone and Wifi lights flash. (On V1 the button is on the back, on V1.5 hubs it's on the right hand side at the top.)
V1 hub lights twinkle independantly, V1.5 lights flash orange together.
You now have about 30 seconds to connect the PC by Wifi as usual. The Wireless Association button allows your PC to connect to the Hub then registers the hub's MAC address.

Repeat for any other wifi devices or PCs/

Nobody else can now connect by wifi to your hub unless they can get to your hub OR they are able to intercept and spoof your MAC address, but that is of very low liklihood in a domestic situation.

Note for experimenters: WDS connected slavesseem to be unaffected by MAC address filtering, in fact because WDS registers the MAC address of the other hub or repeater you can even change the SSID of the other device and WDS still connects the hubs together.

9. How to reset the PC's IP address

This is not strictly Home Hub process but is often asked.

If you have your PC set up for automatic IP address allocation (which is the normal "default" setting) and you need to plug in an ethernet cable whilst the PC is running, the Hub will not issue an IP address to the PC.

You need to release and renew the IP assignment. This can be done by rebooting the PC, but this takes some time. The more techy way is to run the windows command screen and put in two commands.

In XP make sure you are running as Administrator.
Click on Start then Run. In the Run screen type cmd and hit Enter.

In VISTA click on Start then in the Search box type cmd. You will get a list of search results in the white box and you should RIGHT-click in the one called cmd.exe and select the option Run As Administrator.

In Vista and XP you now have a black command screen with something like C:\Users\Fred> as a command prompt.

Type in ipconfig /releaseand hit Enter
Then type in ipconfig /renewand hit enter.

You will now have an IP address on the PC allocated by the hub (But ONLY if your network connection is set up for Automatic IP address allocation!)