The Recovery process is simple and it hardly takes five minutes, but time depends on how fast is your router boots.
- First of all connect to the console port, start terminal application, and power on the router. When you see the boot process beginning, hit the Break sequence. (Break sequence is usually Ctrl+Page Break, but it might differ according to terminal applications.) Doing this interrupts the boot process and drops the router into ROMMON.
- At the ROMMON prompt, enter the command confreg 0x2142 to set the configuration register to 0x2142.
- Restart the router by power cycling it or by issuing the command reset.
- When the router reloads, the configuration register setting of 0x2142 instructs the router to ignore the startup-config file in NVRAM. You will be asked if you want to go through Setup mode because the router thinks it has no startup-configuration file. Exit from Setup mode.
- Press Return and enable command enable to go into privileged EXEC command mode. No password is required because the startup config file was not loaded.
- Load the configuration manually by entering copy startup-config running-config.
- Go into the Global Configuration mode using the command configure terminal and change the password with the command enable password password or enable secret password.
- Save the new password by entering copy running-config startup-config.
- Go to the global config prompt, and change the configuration register back to the default setting with the command config-register 0x2102. Exit back to the privileged exec prompt.
- Reboot the router using the reload command. You will be asked to save your changes; you can do so if you have made additional configuration changes.
