Catalyst 2960XR Corrupted Boot Image - USB Restore not working *headdesk*

[Jeff_T]

     Hello Cisco Experts!  I'm really hoping someone on here can assist because I'm at the end of my proverbial rope.  I battled this situation for 7 hours yesterday and put all of my considerable googling skills to the test, but alas I am admitting (temporary) defeat. Here's the situation:

    When attempting to add the 8th member to an existing stack I maaaaaay have neglected to check firmware compatibility. Through a comedy of errors the boot image is now corrupted.  Through many hours of trial and torment I have finally worked through - the USB driver issue, the correct mini-usb cable issue, the TFTP retrieval of working stack .tar file, and now no matter what I try, I cannot get this switch to take the file.  I am stuck at the switch: prompt and cannot progress to privileged mode to TFTP the .tar or .bin back into the correct directory.  I can set an IP address (seemingly) but the device will not show up on the network and says it doesn't have an IP address (mgmt port shows no activity), 6 usb sticks later from 256mb up to 8GB, formatted in FAT16 and/or FAT32 all give errors in both usbflash0 and usbflash1. I cannot get the switch to format any of the drives as it always gives the response "unknown filesystem usbflash0:" 

     I'm sitting here at switch:, and I just don't know what to try next. Any suggestions would be incredibly helpful!  Thank you in advance!

Jeff

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi Jeff,

If USB type A for storage is not working and the old IOS is still on the flash, as a last resort, you may have to use xmode using the instructions in this link. If you want to go this route, please make sure to use 115200 baud rate for faster transfer.

Just to be sure, you are using USB type A for storage and not the one for console right?

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/switches/catalyst-2950-series-switches/41845-192.html

HTH

[Jeff_T]

Ok! Additional info!  Apparently the 7th USB stick I found works!  I was able to copy c2960x-universalk9-mz.152-2.E6.bin into the flash directory.  Unfortunately output is as follows:

Loading "flash:/c2960x-universalk9-mz.150-2.EX4/c2960x-universalk9-mz.150-2.EX4.bin"...flash:/c2960x-universalk9-mz.150-2.EX4/c2960x-universalk9-mz.150-2.EX4.bin: no such file or directory

Error loading "flash:/c2960x-universalk9-mz.150-2.EX4/c2960x-universalk9-mz.150-2.EX4.bin"

It looks like it's still trying to boot from the corrupted file. How can I force it to boot from the correct file?

[Reza Sharifi]

Try:
boot flash:c2960x-universalk9-mz.152-2.E6.bin

[Jeff_T]

You were only a few minutes too late!  I just tried that and was able to go through the initial setup and save the config to NVRAM. I rebooted the switch and, while it looked like it was trying to boot from the wrong image initially, it then moved to the correct .bin and now appears to be loading correctly. Now as a point of curiosity, I'm wondering how I can remove the incorrect boot attempt from memory and have it boot to the correct image first.  At this point, I may just try adding it back to the stack and seeing if it will take off like it's supposed to.

[balaji.bandi]

you can correct removing boot image

conf t

!

no boot system 

boot system Flash:yourversion.bin

!

wr

[Jeff_T]

Perfect!  I just found that exact response on another thread and that's done it. I added the reload and advise command at the end and confirmed it went directly to the correct image!  Thank you.

[balaji.bandi]

glad all went well.

[Reza Sharifi]

Glad to help Jeff!

Please mark the post as resolved, so others can benefit from it.

[Jeff_T · Accepted solution]

Ok, so just a little summary since it looks like everything is working correctly

1. Was unable to access switch by any other method than mini-usb console via Putty - and for whatever reason with Windows 10, Putty wouldn't actually connect until I unplugged and plugged the switch back in, then the session opened. COM settings: speed - 9600, data bits - 8, stop bits - 1, parity - none, flow control - none.

2. When connected the switch showed it was unable to boot from the image due to corruption and was stuck at the switch: prompt, unable to proceed to 'enable' mode.

3. On the working switch stack since I was not on site, I utilized the instructions found at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst2960x/software/15-0_2_EX/file_management/file_management/img_files.html to tftp upload the correct image to a .tar file.  Then transferred that .tar file to my current location.

4. After going through several USB drives I can confirm that an up to 8GB USB stick will work, formatted FAT32.  This one just so happens to be a Lexar.  I pulled the correct .bin file from the root of the .tar and copied it to the flash drive, inserted in usbflash0 and issued the following command:

copy usbflash0:filename.bin flash:filname.bin  

5. After rebooting the device I discovered it was still attempting to boot from the incorrect image so I issued the following:

boot flash:filename.bin

as recommended by Reza Sharifi, completed the initial configuration, and saved to NVRAM

6. On the next boot I found that it first attempted to again boot the incorrect file, but then moved to the correct image. At that time I used the following commands to correct the primary boot image suggested by BB:

conf t

no boot system

boot system flash:filename.bin

wr

reload and advise

7. After a successful boot from the correct image I was able to configure the VLAN1 interface with an IP address, no shutdown command, and another save, and the switch is passing traffic as expetcted!

Thank you all for the assistance to get me past that final hurdle. Hopefully someone will find this information useful down the road!