Hi Husy,

It will not boot apart from me forcing it to go into monitor mode. All it does is this process over and over:

Cisco Secure PIX Firewall BIOS (4.0) #0: Thu Mar 2 22:59:20 PST 2000

Platform PIX-515

Flash=i28F640J5 @ 0x300

Use BREAK or ESC to interrupt flash boot.

Use SPACE to begin flash boot immediately.

Reading 123392 bytes of image from flash.

Cisco Secure PIX Firewall BIOS (4.0) #0: Thu Mar 2 22:59:20 PST 2000

Platform PIX-515

Flash=i28F640J5 @ 0x300

Use BREAK or ESC to interrupt flash boot.

Use SPACE to begin flash boot immediately.

Reading 123392 bytes of image from flash.

Cisco Secure PIX Firewall BIOS (4.0) #0: Thu Mar 2 22:59:20 PST 2000

Platform PIX-515

Flash=i28F640J5 @ 0x300

Use BREAK or ESC to interrupt flash boot.

Use SPACE to begin flash boot immediately.

Reading 123392 bytes of image from flash.

Cisco Secure PIX Firewall BIOS (4.0) #0: Thu Mar 2 22:59:20 PST 2000

Platform PIX-515

Flash=i28F640J5 @ 0x300

Do this:

1- hit ESC to interrupt flash boot,

2- do whatever you need in your original post,

3- one the pix up and running, do:

a- format flash:

b- copy tftp flash:

now copy pix 7.x or 8.x code from tftp

server to flash:

4- wr mem

5- reload

now your pix will boot up normally.

When you do from monitor mode, the image will

NOT be saved into flash.

CCIE Security

I have done this exact process - Twice. Once with pix723.bin and once with pix803.bin. I even when so far as to do a verify of the files before the reload. Any other ideas?

Is there a config-register setting on a PIX?

I see. So what happened when you issued wr mem command when IOS loads up successfully right after your tftp?

"wr mem" has nothing to do with saving

the Pix 7.x/8.x image into the flash:

the point I am trying to make here is that

if you upgrade the Pix from monitor mode to

7.x or 8.x from 6.x code, the image will NOT

be saved into the flash initially, only in

memory. During the upgrade, you will see

a big banner from Cisco that will tell you

so.

CCIE security

Jerry,

It looks like the answer is in the question itself. The following line from your output

Reading 123392 bytes of image from flash

I dont know a valid IOS which is 123K. So make sure you have the correct IOS file, it should be at least 5MB. If you are sure that your IOS is above 4-5MB, then please follow the steps below in their respective order.

1)Boot in monitor mode by pressing ESC during bootup

2)tftp the IOS and let the device boot itself from memory. Then issue the following command exactly.

copy tftp://tftpserverip/imagename.bin flash:image

3)Type dir and it will list you the current files in flash. Make sure byte count is correct

4) Now issue the following in respective order

boot system flash:image

wr mem

reload

Make sure you downloaded the IOS from Cisco using your CCO account

Regards

I checked my PIX, it reads the same amount of byte. It must be the boot loader part not the IOS. Anyway, please take the steps exactly and post the results.

Like I said - I have already done a verify on the file and the hash matches so it is not corrupt. I kept seeing the '123392 bytes of image from flash" and that had me concerned thus the question regarding a config-register. Any other Idea's?

Here is the sh flash, dir, sh run and sh ver from the PIX.

config-register is only available in ASA and routers as far as I know.

did you try boot system flash:image ?

I have one last suggestion that I perform hardly ever (took 10 minutes to find the file in my resources :) , It maybe a corrupt flash if this does not work.

1)Pull your config file from PIX to tftp server

2)Power down your PIX, unplug all cords (including failover cord if you have the interface) except power and interface that you will tftp.

3)Download the attached file to your tftp server

4)Power up your PIX, then enter monitor mode. Tftp the erasedisk622.bin

5) Say yes to erase disk question. After it completes, follow the steps in their respective order in my previous post again

SUCCESS!!!!!

What ever that little file was it worked. Thanks to everyone on this forum who offer input.

Sweet!