Cisco 1941-SEC/K9 password recovery

[b_stock]

Hello community. I have a Cisco 1941 router that I need help with password recovery. Here is part of the boot screen when connected to terminal via console port:

Readonly ROMMON initialized
PASSWORD RECOVERY FUNCTIONALITY IS DISABLED

I searched on internet, and it appears that with password recovery functionality being disabled it is not easy to restore the router to factory default. Your help will be greatly appreciated!

[Julio E. Moisa]

Hi,

This link could be useful

http://packetlife.net/blog/2010/oct/11/recovering-no-service-password-recovery-service/

:-)

[b_stock]

Thanks for your reply. I will follow those suggestions, but as far as I remember I found them while searching for the solution, but did not see the prompt while router was booting... 

[ Send the break signal at this point ]

The router was booting all the way to the prompt asking for a user name and no break signal would stop. I will try again when get back to my office and let you know.

Thanks again!

[Georg Pauwen]

Hello,

in addition to Julio's post, the sledgehammer method would be to open the chassis of your 1941 and reseat the NVRAM, which should erase anything stored on it including the startup config...

[iamchicken]

Hi Ciscomm 

What is your solution to this? 2023

Need to recover admin password without losing the configuration.

[Richard Burts]

You have camped onto a very old discussion without providing much information about your situation. Have you tried the normal approach to password recovery? If so it would give you access to the router and to startup config, which you could use to create a new running config. Or are you in the situation where password recovery is disabled (which was the focus of the original post here)? When password recovery has been disabled, when you power cycle the router there is a very brief period when the boot process is completed where the break key will work, giving you access to the router and to startup config. If that is not working for you there is an approach that has worked for me:

- in your terminal emulator set the baud rate to 300

- power cycle the router

- wait for the boot process to complete (a couple of minutes to be safe)

- in your terminal emulator set the baud rate to 9600

- type yes and hit enter

That should give you access to the router and to startup config, which you can use to create a new running config.