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38-3
Catalyst 2960 and 2960-S Switch Software Configuration Guide
OL-8603-09
Chapter 38 Troubleshooting
Recovering from a Lost or Forgotten Password
Step 6 Press the Mode button and at the same time, reconnect the power cord to the switch.
You can release the Mode button a second or two after the LED above port 1 goes off. Several lines of
information about the software appear along with instructions:
The system has been interrupted prior to initializing the flash file system. The following
commands will initialize the flash file system, and finish loading the operating system
software#
flash_init
load_helper
boot
Step 7 Initialize the flash file system:
switch: flash_init
Step 8 If you had set the console port speed to anything other than 9600, it has been reset to that particular
speed. Change the emulation software line speed to match that of the switch console port.
Step 9 Load any helper files:
switch: load_helper
Step 10 Start the file transfer by using the Xmodem Protocol.
switch: copy xmodem: flash:
image_filename.bin
Step 11 After the Xmodem request appears, use the appropriate command on the terminal-emulation software to
start the transfer and to copy the software image into flash memory.
Step 12 Boot the newly downloaded Cisco IOS image.
switch:boot flash:
image_filename.bin
Step 13 Use the archive download-sw privileged EXEC command to download the software image to the switch
or to the switch stack.
Step 14 Use the reload privileged EXEC command to restart the switch and to verify that the new software image
is operating properly.
Step 15 Delete the flash:image_filename.bin file from the switch.
Recovering from a Lost or Forgotten Password
The default configuration for the switch allows an end user with physical access to the switch to recover
from a lost password by interrupting the boot process during power-on and by entering a new password.
These recovery procedures require that you have physical access to the switch.
Note On these switches, a system administrator can disable some of the functionality of this feature by
allowing an end user to reset a password only by agreeing to return to the default configuration. If you
are an end user trying to reset a password when password recovery has been disabled, a status message
shows this during the recovery process.
These sections describes how to recover a forgotten or lost switch password:
• Procedure with Password Recovery Enabled, page 38-4
• Procedure with Password Recovery Disabled, page 38-6