How to reset lost CISCO Router password
Posted on 20. May, 2009 by Bharat in Networking
Trying to get the power switch of the Cisco Router
Lately I was working on a newly purchased Cisco Router for a vpn tunnel configuration, and to my supprise the password I set initally didn’t work the next time I boot the router… Had a tought time figuring out the solution to reset the password since I had been working more on Huawei products.
Did a couple of reseach online and took some guide tips from my General Manager who is a complete gueius when it comes to Networking & Systems, and then was able to reset the password using the rommon technique.
Thought sharing it online would be of some help to people facing the same problem. So here we go…
Please note, these are the GENERAL procedures but procedures vary on varying devices!
- power off and back on the device
- hold down control and hit BREAK (may have to do this a few times)
- Once you are at the rommon> prompt, type confreg.
- Say “n” to all options except this one: enable “ignore system config info”? y/n [n]: y
- Say “n” to all other options
- once back at the rommon prompt, type reset ,the device will reboot
- Once the device is booted, you will know that you are bypassing the config because you will be asked this question (say no) ..Would you like to enter the initial configuration dialog? [yes/no]: no
- Once booted, if you do a show version, you will see that your config register is 0×2142.
- Now, you can either go to enable mode and do a show startup-config to see what the enable password is OR, if you have an enable secret password set, you can replace it by doing a copy start run, then going into global configuration and creating a new enable secret with enable secret cisco, then copy it back with copy run start.
- Now, you want to change the config register back. In global configuration, type config-register 0×2102
- save your configuration with wr or copy run start
- reboot the device and you should be back with your original configuration but with a password that you know!
Do let me know if you need further information…
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