Cisco 4321 bricked?

jboogie81 · ‎04-27-2020

Hi all, I bought a 4321 router to add to my lab to get familiar with IOS XE but i just can't get it to boot or access ROMMON. Boot syntax loops as shown:

Initializing Hardware ...

Checking for PCIe device presence...done
System integrity status: 0x610
Rom image verified correctly

Current image running: Boot ROM0

Last reset cause: LocalSoft
ISR4321/K9 platform with 4194304 Kbytes of main memory

PASSWORD RECOVERY FUNCTIONALITY IS DISABLED

........

unable to open bootflash:isr4300-universalk9.16.06.05.SPA.bin (14)

........

autoboot: boot failed, restarting...

Resetting .......

Initializing Hardware ...

I assume the seller wiped the existing ios, but also set the no service password-recovery because i cannot access ROMMON at all. From the little i know about these routers the flash is an eusb card on the board which i don't have the ability to pull it out and put the ios image it is looking for on it because i don't have any other router or device i could take that module to plug in and load it so i could put it back in. Is there anything else i can try or am I stuck with a paper weight? Thanks in advance

pieterh · ‎04-28-2020

if password recovery is not disabled, you can
- get into rommon
- boot without loading the config (and passwords)
then you can access the flash to
- copy the config from flash to running-config (without knowing the passwords)
- change the passwords to known passwords

With password recovery disabled you should still be able to access rommon mode.
but when trying recovery, the configuration will be wiped.

look at Troubleshooting Guide for the Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Router

and Troubleshoot Cisco 4000 Series ISR Stuck in ROMMON

for recovery procedures

Steven Case · ‎04-29-2020

I've seen this before (I typoed…. it was embarrassing). Believe it or not, all I did was wait about an hour of the boot cycling before it finally reverted to an old image. I imagine if there isn't an old image to revert to, so you should eventually end up in ROMMON to do the flash_init and see if there is a bin file or a packages.conf file to boot to using dir flash: or dir bootflash:

Of course, if you never get to that point this doesn't help, but I did find that patience is key. If I remember TAC correctly, they told me it tries booting 14 times.