It wont mess up anything on the radio, soft reset only clears the hub DB, not the radios, and when you load the backup everything will come back and should work just like before. The only thing I am not sure of is if the hub will still respond them while "reset", could possibly make some go into a panic mode. Usually they all will reconnect again even if that happens but occasionally you might have to pair a device or two again.
I don't believe it. The antenna swap worked. Either that or some combination of cord jiggling while doing the antenna swap. These are the stock antennas. And they weren't loose! (And yes, I doubled checked to make sure that Zigbee still works)
I just paired 3 devices in a row. No sweat! Now I can get back to getting my mesh rebuilt!
Gentlemen, I can't thank you enough for sticking with me through this. I was getting really close to tossing my HE out the window. This community continues to be one of my favorite things about this platform.
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Now swap them back to ensure what it was. If the antenna is the case, I'm sure there won't be a prob getting a new antenna 
Glad things are working now
Now I am sad I did not think of trying that before you reset the radio. Although it was weird you could not remove the ghost nodes while on Zwave JS, so maybe something else was going on too.
I had fiddled with the antennas when this started just to make sure they had a good connection. I never thought about switching them.
I'm guessing that still wouldn't have solved my ghost problem though. This was the first time I've ever rebuilt my z-wave network and I'm on my 3rd hub. I was probably due.
I've already re-joined, swapped and deleted all of the "_old" HE devices for my switches and dimmers. So life feels a lot more normal now. I just have the battery devices left to do.
The one disappointing thing is that excluding and re-including seems to have cleared my device preferences. (on Inovelli switches, that's a lot of preferences) I wasn't expecting that. So I have a lot of re-configuration to do. But I have the Preference Manager tool to do them in bulk so it shouldn't take too long.
I'm just glad I have a path forward again. Thanks again for all the help!
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Yes. If it is the antenna it must have some defect with it. Maybe an intermittent like a poor solder connection. These are dual band antennas 900MHz/2.4GHz so there might be passive devices inside for tuning/matching each band. They may have poor soldering on the 900MHz leg.
You may have had some mild corrosion that was resolved when you removed the antennas, or it could be just coincidence the problem was resolved when you removed the antennas.
I suggest running the "Anntena Test" from the Z-Wave Details section of the settings menu.
The Z-Wave antenna is the one located closest to the USB connector. Perform the test on each antenna, in turn, while it is connected in that position.
The device possibly did retain its settings but when you include it on Hubitat many drivers will just force all the settings to be the defaults, so that would reset them. Possibly after you did the swap the settings from the old device entry would carry over and then running configure would put them all back how you had it. Not sure though how the setting get handled when you use the swap.
That makes sense.
I’m still working through getting all of my devices reconnected. I’ll try the antenna tests sometime soon.
Right now I’m just happy to have all my switches working reliably again.
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I haven't done the antenna test, but I was still having some periodic issues and decided to do some trial an error around my hub.
It turns out another big culprit was the Ubiquiti US8-60W switch that was sitting about 5ft away on the other end of the shelf. I didn't think anything of it, because there was an Edgerouter sitting in the same spot for years with no issues.
A few months back, I reorganized my networking and moved my router to a closet and put the Ubiquiti switch in its place. Well since I was still having a few zwave issues after all this adventure, I decided to see what would happen if I moved that too. And Bob's your Uncle, everything started working perfectly.
I've seen other posts about switches causing interference problems, but again, my Edgerouter had sat in that location for years without issue. Swapping 1 piece of networking gear for another similar piece never registered as a change in the environment around it. I now believe this was the event/change that caused all my problems.
Takeaway: If you're having z-wave issues and there's a switch anywhere near your hub. The switch is the problem. However unlikely that may seem.
Thank you all for all your help. Without you I probably would have thrown all of it away.
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