Password Recovery Process without turning the router off

auraliliana · ‎07-10-2007

Hi, I know it's kind of a stupid question, but what's to lose, maybe someone knows a trick for this.

I just got to this new job, and we have a 800 router, and for some reason, we don't have the enable passwords for it. The router is in production, working fine, and it's not very feasible to turn it off, but then of course we can't change any of its configuration. I've tried to make them understand we must follow the password recovery procedure (which requires the router to be turned off), but they said no. If anyone knows some way to accomplish this, please let me know.

Thanks for your attention.

Amit Singh · ‎07-10-2007

No You cannot do the password recovery without rebooting the router. You can talk your collegues and show them the password recovery procedures for Cisco routers and try to convince that it cannot be done without rebooting the router. Try scheduling some downtime and do the recovery when users are not online or may be on an off day.

Please find the links below for more info:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/ps380/products_password_recovery09186a00800942c2.shtml

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/ps380/products_password_recovery09186a00800942bc.shtml

HTH,Please rate if it does.

-amit singh

Thomas Larus · ‎08-13-2008

I have been told that there is a way to do this with Cisco devices if you have SNMP r/w access. You use SNMP to read the config, change the password in the config and then use SNMP to push the new config back out to the device.

I haven't tested this method yet. I have only heard about this method.