Articles & Tutorials

Cisco Password Recovery for 1600, 2600, 1700, 3600, 7500 and Other Newer Routers.
By Ken Craft

1. Connect your console cable to the console port of the router. This assumes that you already have your terminal settings configured for the standard Cisco settings which are as follows:
   1. 9600 baud, no parity, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit and no flow control
2. Physically power the router off and then back on.
3. Send a break sequence (Break Key in Hyperterm or Alt-B in TeraTerm) once you see the total amount of memory appear on the terminal screen. This can be done anytime during the first 60 seconds after the router is powered on.
4. Type confreg 0x2142 and press Enter at the > prompt to boot from flash without loading the startup configuration stored in NVRAM. Other common configuration register settings are as follows:
   1. 0x2102 – The most common setting. This boots the router from flash and loads the startup-config
   2. 0x2101 – Bypasses the flash and loads from the Boot image located on the Boot ROM. This is also the setting to use if your flash is set to read only and you need to change it to read/write in order to upgrade the IOS image.
5. Type reset at the > prompt and press Enter. This will automatically reboot the router and ignore the startup-config.
6. Type no for each question to avoid going through the step-by-step initial configuration dialog.
7. Type enable at the Router> prompt. This will put you in enable mode and change the prompt to Router#.
8. Type copy startup-config running-config (or simply copy start run). This will copy the configuration you want to save into the running configuration.
9. The show running-config (show run) command will show the configuration of the router. All the interfaces will currently be in a shutdown state.
10. Type configure terminal (conf t) and the prompt will change to MyRouter(config)# with MyRouter being whatever the original hostname was set to.
11. Type enable secret <password> to change the password.
12. Issue the no shutdown command on every interface that is currently in use. You can then type show interface to verify that all configured interfaces are up/up.
13. Type config-register 0x2102 to return the configuration register to the normal boot setting. This causes the router to load the IOS from flash and load the startup-configuration at the next reload.
14. Press Ctrl-z to leave the configuration mode.
15. Type copy running-config startup-config (copy run start) to save the changes.
16. Type reload to restart the router.
17. The router will now reboot will all your configuration changes intact and will have the new enable secret password that you just assigned.