i tried to recover the password for 1721 cisco router with the normal recovery steps and it gave me the output below.

[sp9343693]

PASSWORD RECOVERY FUNCTIONALITY IS DISABLED
getdirent: bad file magic number, possibly out of sync
boot: cannot determine first file name on device "flash:"

[Bert Gevers]

Hi Ayman,

it looks like this device is configured with 'no service password-recovery' and hence, access to rommon is denied.

Additionally, it also looks like there is either a corrupted or no IOS image on the flash and hence, it may be that this device fails to boot.

The following link explains this behavior:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/ps274/products_configuration_example09186a00801d8113.shtml

The only solution for this is also described on this page:

Risks

If a router is configured with the no service       password-recovery command, this disables all access to the       ROMMON. If there is no valid Cisco IOS software image in the Flash memory of       the router, the user is not able to use the ROMMON       XMODEM command in order to load a new Flash image. In order to       fix the router, you must get a new Cisco IOS software image on a Flash SIMM, or       on a PCMCIA card, for example on the 3600 Series Routers.

HTH,

Bert