Re: 2960 Password Recovery. Absolutely, yes. You will need physical access to the device and a console cable (these days you'll normally need a USB to serial converter as well as laptops don't have serial ports any more). You may also want to double check how to send a 'break' in your chosen terminal client before starting the procedure. Recovering from a Lost or Forgotten Password The default configuration for the switch allows an end user with physical access to the switch to recover from a lost password by interrupting the boot process during power-on and by entering a new password. These recovery procedures require that you have physical access to the switch.
In setting up a new network switch (Catalyst 2960-S), I did the initial configuration dialog (via the console port), in which it asks for host-name, secret, password, virtual terminal password, and other things.I set the enable secret, the enable password, and the virtual terminal password. At no point does it ask for a username.
If I exit or let it time out, then I need to get back in, at which point it asks for a username/password. What is this username/password?Is the password one of the three mentioned above that it asks me to create during setup? Is it some default value? Is the username something like 'cisco' or 'admin'?The 'getting started guide' suggests that the initial web-interface default password is cisco and that it ignores the username field.
I tried that. On the Cisco 2960-S, the default credentials are cisco/cisco. These get deleted after the first time you login to the switch. There shouldn't be any access control on the console, unless the express setup puts it in there.Now, if you set the virtual terminal password, then it probably just set a password on the line vty block, this should let you in with Telnet without needing a username. Once you get in to the switch with telnet you can run sh run inc username.
This will tell you what the username is set as, and probably the password if you don't have the password-encryption service on.If this fails to work, then you will have to do a on the switch.