Yes, continuing, after you re-include without security.
First, it is extremely rare to have to do a hard reset. The soft reset procedure should be all that is needed unless you get ghost nodes, and you don’t have any now. They happen much less often after all the C-7 bug fix releases.
I would suggest two things.
First, install the Hubitat Mesh Details app. It will let us see what the state of your mesh is.
If you don’t feel comfortable installing a user-written app, here are the instructions. Post back if it’s not clear.
https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=How_to_Install_Custom_Apps
I will poke about a bit for details on how to factory reset the switches.
