Cisco Password Recovery - A Generic Overview

With the wide range of Cisco equipment the password recovery procedure can vary. You will however need physical access to the device.

This procedure is written for the Cisco 1600, 1700, 2600, 3600, 7500 Series routers, other's may be similar

• Connect to your equipment via the console port using a console cable. The standard terminal speed settings are 9600 baud, no parity, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit and no flow control.
• Physically power the equipment off then on.
• Initiate a break sequence within 60 seconds of powering the equipment on.
• At the > prompt enter confreg 0x2142, which will instruct the router to boot from flash bypassing the configuration stored in NVRAM.
• Enter reset at the next > prompt. Your router will reboot and bypass the startup-config.
• Upon restart you will be presented with the options for a initial configuration. Enter no for each question.
• When you have the Router> prompt, enter enable mode.
• Next copy startup-config running-config (copy start run). This puts the startup config into your running config.
• show running-config (show run) to display the running configuration.
• configure terminal (config t) to enter config mode
• From here you can remove or change passwords, console, line etc
• enable secret <password> to change the enable password
• Issue a no shut command for every interface you are using.
• config-register 0x2102 to restore the configuration register for a normal boot.
• Ctrl-z to leave config mode
• Save your current config, copy running-config startup-config (copy run start)
• Issue a reload to restart

A full list of procedures for all models’ can be found on Cisco's website.

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/474/