Catalyst 3560 not booting

[syedarafat]

Hi,

I'm having an issue with 2 of my 3560s which are not booting.

The last thing I did on both switches before it hangs was:

>write erase

>reload

restarted as normal

>set vtp mode transparent

>delete vlan.dat

>wr mem

>reload

I've tried powering-off the switch and pressing the Mode button and power on.

I got to swtch: mode

switch:reset

It restarted past the POST but just hang halfway at the same bootp-up process as shown on the attached.

The SYST LED is Green color when it hangs.

Any ideas? Please help.

TIA

[glen.grant]

What happens when you hit enter at this point?  Looks like it is booted up the SSH process is usually the last process to load. 

[syedarafat]

Nothing happened when I hit the Enter key multiple times.

I waited about 10-15mins assuming that it'll take a while to load but nothing happens too.

I went to switch: mode again and tried booting the image from here as shown below.

But it still hangs at the same place for both switches.

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi,

when you get to switch mode, just type boot and press enter. That should load the IOS you have on your flash

HTH

[syedarafat]

I've tried swith:boot .

But it seems I need to do swtch:flash_init before executing the switch:boot command as shown.

After this it was able to boot but it still hangs at the same place. :-(

Does this means that I have a corrupted IOS or something?

[Reza Sharifi]

If the IOS was fine before you deleted the config, than it should still be good.  Try password recovery using the link below:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/lan/catalyst3560/software/release/12.1_19_ea1/configuration/guide/swtrbl.html#wp1090048

and if this does not help, you may need to load a new ios using Xmodem.

HTH

[Leo Laohoo]

"Invalid argument"???

Are you sure the appliance in question is a plain 3560 and not a 3560E/X or 3750??

[syedarafat]

I wish I was mistaken and that it could be a 3560E/X or 3750 instead. :-)  Too bad I dont have budget for those. I'm pretty sure the ones that I have are WS-C3560-24PS. I will download the latest IOS and upload it using XModem to the switch to see if this solves the issue.  Appreciate the advice.

[Reza Sharifi]

Syed,

Since the default xmodem speed is 9600 baud, it takes some times to download the image.  You can however change the speed to 115200, so the download is a lot faster.  Make sure to change it back to 9600 when you are done.

set baud 115200

HTH

[syedarafat]

Reza,

I've downloaded the latest IOS file from Cisco website and did the steps below.

switch: format_flash

switch: set BAUD 115200

switch: copy xmodem: flash:c3560-ipservicesk9-mz.122-55.SE6.bin

From the HyperTerm window select the file to send via xmodem protocol.

After successfullty uploaded the new IOS in 45mins.

switch: unset BAUD

switch: boot

Somehow this did the trick as my switches are now able to bootup to prompt mode.

Now back to my IE lab practice!

Thanks all!