Need to recover username - can't get into the router

[rob.bryson]

Brand new 1841 router. Connected to the console and ran through the initial setup, changing the enable secret and enable passwords. After setup I did a conf term and entered the following - no username cisco, then wrote the config to memory. The router is now prompting me for a username, and it's not cisco or admin. I know what the passwords are, but have no idea what it wants for a username. Thanks for any help you can offer.

[Richard Burts]

Robert

It sounds like you have painted yourself into a corner. My guess is that the console is configured with login local (or perhaps aaa authentication local). When this is configured the router will look for a locally configured username and password to authenticate sessions on the console (and if it is done on the console it is probably done on the vty as well). But you have deleted the local username and password. And this locks you out of the router.

At this point you will need to do password recovery: boot the router, while it is booting hit the break key to get into rommon, set the config register to 0x2142, boot (ignoring startup-config). When you get into the router - with an empty config - you can either start from scratch and configure it as you want it, or you can copy from startup-config to running-config, and while you are in privilege mode you can correct the config. (correcting the config might be configuring a username and password or it might be changing authenticatin on the console and the vty)

After you do password recovery be sure to put the config-register back to its usual 0x2102.

HTH

Rick