Motorola Router-Modem went to factory defaut for no reason

I connect to the internet through a combine modem-router I lease from my ISP. It's a Motorola SBG900, with a built-in firewall and all, and it's a really nice and awesome little device.

Yesterday when I came home from work, The Guy told me that after a 10-second power outage, the router-modem went nuts. He power cycled it, obviously, and went through the basic steps of troubleshooting. After he ruled out all security software and any hardware problems, still, none of our computers, or the PS3, would connect. The SBG900 however was happily alive and connecting, if the LEDs on it were to be believed.

So when I got home from work he told me what happened, and naturally I went about trying to fix it. After all, he needs the connection since he works from home. After a few minutes of trying to connect I checked with my laptop and it clearly saw a network named "motorola", unsecured and open to any connecting device. I could connect to it no problem, but when I tried to log in to the router IP I was denied access.

In a stroke of genius I used the unsecure motorola connection to google for the router's default login and password and used them, and it let me in. Everything was reset to factory defaults! :eek Completely unsecure, no encryption, nothing.

I re-entered all my old settings, encryption level, pass phrase, and so on, and then checked that all devices in the house were able to connect again with the proper settings. Everything seems to work and I have a secure connection again. I also checked that The Guy's work laptop can connect to his company network and it's all good.

But should a power surge do this to my router? Seriously? It never has before!