Cisco Systems ME 3400 Recovering from a Lost or Forgotten Password

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Cisco ME 3400 Ethernet Access Switch Software Configuration Guide
OL-9639-06
Chapter 42 Troubleshooting Recovering from a Lost or Forgotten Password
Step 6 Press the break key, and at the same time, reconnect the power cord to the switch.
You can release the break key 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, or encountered an error during initialization of the
flash filesystem. The following commands will initialize the flash filesystem, 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.
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 to recover from a lost password by
interrupting the boot process during power-on and by entering a new password.
Note On these switches, a system administrator can disable some of the functionality of password recovery
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.
Disabling password recovery provides configuration file security by prevent ing unauthorized users from
accessing the configuration file.