Cisco 7961 IP phone showing blank screen after factory reset.

[deepakpachorkar1]

Hi Everyone,

I have factory resetted my cisco 7961 ip phone firstly using 123456789*0# and then 3497672850*# ,but now its showing blank screen with all line buttons blinking in sequence.

What happened to my ip phone ? is it dead ? how can I make my cisco 7961 IP Phone working again.

Please guide me

Thankx & Regards

Deepak

[Ayodeji Okanlawon]

Deepak,

Your phone is not dead and yes your IP Phone can work again. The first place to start is to ensure you have a dhcp server with the correct tftp ip on it. This is common when you do a factory reset and the phone cant obtain its ip and tftp information from a dhcp server. So step 1 to doing a Lazarus (bringing back from the dead) is to provide a dhcp server for your phone

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"'Nature is too thin a screen, the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through it everywhere"-Ralph Waldo Emerson

[deepakpachorkar1]

Thankx okanlawon,

Yes My Network has proper DHCP server with TFTP ip address ,as my almost 5000 IP phones are working .

But cisco 7961 IP phone is not booting up properly its showing blank screen with line buttons blinking.

Regards

Deeapk

[Ayodeji Okanlawon · Accepted solution]

To understand what is going on with the phone, I will suggest that you get a tftp server like tftpd32. Install it on your laptop. Next download the firmware for the 7961 phone to the tftp server directory. Then configure a seperate vlan and dhcp scope for this phone. Assign the pc ip where your tftp server is installed as the tftp ip. Then power cycle the phone. Observe what request the phone is sending to the tftp server...That will give you an idea of whats going on...I can assure you that 99% of the time, the reason why the phone shows a blank scree is because its unable to contact its tfp server after you performed a hard reset on it (3497672850*#)

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"'Nature is too thin a screen, the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through it everywhere"-Ralph Waldo Emerson

[deepakpachorkar1]

HI Aokanlawon,

I tried upgrading phone firmware using above procedure,But my Cisco 7961 IP phone still showing Blank Screen,

Please find the attached log file.

Please suggest me how should I proceed .

MAC of 7961 ip phone is :00:1E:13:E6:36:CD

Regards

Deepak

[Ayodeji Okanlawon]

Deepak,

Thanks for the logs. We can see where the problem is now..

Connection received from 192.168.1.1 on port 49152 [22/08 10:28:52.265]

Read request for file <term61.default.loads>. Mode octet [22/08 10:28:52.265]

File : error 2 in system call CreateFile The system cannot find the file specified. [22/08 10:28:52.265]

The phone cant find the relevant firmware it needs. This happens when the phone cant upgrade to the firmware on the server because its present firmware is too old to upgrade directly to that on the server.

Because we dont know what firmware is on the phone, we have to do some guess work. Lets start by downloading firmware release 8.5 on the server. Ensure you remove the present firmware (all the files including the term61 files). Download a new firmware release 8.5 and put on the server and try again..

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"'Nature is too thin a screen, the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through it everywhere"-Ralph Waldo Emerson

[deepakpachorkar1]

Hi Aokanlawon,

Thank you for the update

I am trying to upgrade the Firmware by locally creating the TFTP server using TFTP32 server..

I have connected my laptop which is working as a tftp server and DHCP server ,and I have connected IP Phone to my laptop using cross cable,

IP phone is getting DHCP IP address but its always trying to find term32.default.loads

I have downloaded 8.5 firmware also I tried 9.3 firmware version which has term32.default.loads in it,

but still my IP phone is getting blank display only .

Please find the attached logs.

Regards

Deepak

[Ayodeji Okanlawon · Accepted solution]

What you need to understand is that the term61.default.loads has the same name all the firmware. Wether its release 8.5 or 9.3 so you wouldnt know which firmware release the phone wants. I am sure that 9.3 wont work. You will need to keep trying different firmware. If 8.5 doesnt work, I suggest you try 8.3 or 8.0.

Ensure that each time you remove all the firmware adn put the relevant firmware files for the release you are trying..

The logs still show the same thing

Read request for file . Mode octet [22/08 17:54:50.718]

File : error 2 in system call CreateFile The system cannot find the file specified. [22/08 17:54:50.718]

There is a similar thread that discussed this here...

https://supportforums.cisco.com/message/3713241#3713241

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[deepakpachorkar1]

Hi aokanlawon ,

Thank you for your reply ,I will try this and let you know the results.

Regards

Deepak

[deepakpachorkar1]

Hi aokanlawon,

Above procedure works ,My cisco 7961 IP phone is working now.

Regards

D

[Ayodeji Okanlawon]

Glad it worked! Dont forget to rate useful post or mark post as correct asnwer! It helps others to know what solved the problem should they have similar issues

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"'Nature is too thin a screen, the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through it everywhere"-Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Pramoth Sundaram]

Hi aokanlawon

i'm a regular follower of you excellent post, your cotribution to this community is great, thank you.

I have a couple of questions for for you if you can help

1. what is the diffrence between factory restting using sequence.123456789*0# and then 3497672850*#

2. i can upgrade the firware by uploading thenew firm ware on cucm via OS admin page the change the phone load name of the phone device settings page on CUCM and reset the phone - will it work ?

Kind Regards

Pramoth

[Ayodeji Okanlawon]

Paramoth,

Thank you for the kind words

Here is the explanation for both.

#Soft Reset

The code for the soft factory reset is: 123456789*0#

A soft reset does the following:
5. deletes key files on the phone including /etc/init.tab
6. reboots
7. phone recovers default loads file from TFTP server

#Total Hard Reset

The code for the total hard reset is: 3491672850*#

A total hard reset formats /flash0 blowing away everything except CNU.  All settings and personalization of the phone is removed.

#Hard Reset with Network Setting Preservation

The code for the network preservation hard reset is: *7412369#085

And it also does a complete format of /flash0 - yet it preserves the network settings so that after the format, any static IP and other network settings are preserved. The settings are stored in volatile RAM, so it is important to not remove power to the phone during this process


#Prerequisites

There are a number of prerequsites that are necessary for a successful factory reset.
8. You must have a network environment in which DHCP is used to provide the phone with an IP address and a TFTP server (i.e. DHCP option 150).
9. There must be an appropriate default load for your phone model on that TFTP server:      
• The default load name is: termxx.default.loads (where xx is part of the model number, 41 for 7941, 62 for 7962, 70 for 7970, etc.)
• The version of the default load must be the same signing type (dev or release) as the phone on which you wish to do a factory reset.
• This file (termxx.default.loads) is packaged with every phoneload that is installed on the callmanager, but since the name is not unique per phoneload version, the copy of termxx.default.loads is always the one from the most recent load that was installed on the callmanager. It may not be the type (dev or release) that you want.

2. Yes you can do this via CUCM OS Admin. However you need to be careful in setting the default load to the new firmware because you dont want all phones to downgrade to this firmware. So what you should do is define this firmware on the phone device page only for the affected phones

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[Pramoth Sundaram]

Thank you very much aokanlawon, you are a star. Can i use this option on all Cisco IP Phone model or perticular one's only ?.

I spoke with our team lead who advised that he didn't even know about soft and hard factory reset option available.

Kind Regards

[Ayodeji Okanlawon]

The procedure works on all phones even the new 9900 and 8900 series.

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"opportunity is a haughty goddess who waste no time with those who are unprepared"