Cisco 2960 need to reset or not?

Streaming Audio
1

I have no idea whether my Cisco 2960 switch was factory reset but it seems to work fine. Is that all I need to worry about or does a reset affect SQ or have other benefits?

2

People on here will claim absolutely anything & everything affects SQ in one way or another, so you will soon receive the answer Yes.

Fwiw I reset mine as it didn’t work on arrival. It’s a trivial task but you need a console cable (I found one on Amazon, a console to USB lead so no need for a serial port to usb adaptor, for about £12), and either knowldege of PuTTY or the ability to Google it.

3

Thanks. I take your point about views on SQ. I was I suppose more concerned about whether there were any other downsides to not resetting it.

“Trivial”, “PuTTY”, “Console Cable” are not words I would put together in the same sentence. :smile:

4

:smile:
Blunder on in there and see what happens. That’s my approach to fiddling about with computing. It’ll work, eventually. Someone will have had the same problem before you and will have posted the fix on the internet. How hard can it be? What can possibly go wrong…?
:+1:

5

Hold down the mode button for 20secs. after turning it on. That will reset the switch, but won’t remove any conf or vlan files. That might be all you need to do. It was in my case.

1 Like
6

Can anyone point me to a list of console commands when using terminal.

7

The SQ benefits for the most part are not to do with configuration. It is usually good practice for someone, especially a business, to clear config, as this could be sensitive. Additionally you don’t know how the switch is setup, and could be affecting your home network and applications in ways you don’t realise.
So always best to reset and wipe config by initialising the flash memory. See below

8

http://notthenetwork.me/blog/2013/05/28/reset-a-cisco-2960-switch-to-factory-default-settings/

9

Start PuTTY.
Select Serial (bottom of the left pane)
Set baud = 9800; data bits = 8; stop bit = 1, parity = none (all default)
Set Flow Control = none (this needs to be changed to none)

Hold down the mode button while it powers up and displays its setup on the terminal. Wait for the prompt:
switch>

Then follow this
https://www.pretzellogix.net/2014/02/06/resetting-two-cisco-catalyst-2950-switches-to-factory-defaults/
(It’s easier to understand this than the Cisco manual!)

1 Like
10

Thank you all. I will get a console cable and reset it as advised just to be on the safe side.

11

This is more of what I was looking for…

Thanks.

12

If it works, I don’t think you need to reset it. There’s nothing to lose by doing it, other than that if, like me, you have no clue what you are doing, it may take some time and head scratching to figure out what would, for an IT professional, be very simple.
One of mine had been heavily configured by the previous owner, which I could see once logged in was a large corporation, and having never previously tackled anything like this, it took me quite a few sessions to figure out how to reset it, and configure it for my own use. In most cases, though, I’d say, if it ain’t bust, don’t fix it.

13

And if you need a lead, one like this works fine. RJ45 end goes to the console port on the 2960 (blue outline) and the USB to your computer. I use W10 and didn’t need any drivers installing, it worked out of the bag.

You need to identify which COM port it’s connected through. Open Device Manager and expand PORTS (COM & LPT) to identify it and enter that under the PuTTY Session node (top of left pane) and set to serial. Enter the same value (e.g. COM3) under Connection > Serial at the bottom along with Xanthe’s useful info above.

14

Chris, other than there may be some retained config that subtly lowers performance or interacts with other things on your home network… unless you look at the logs you might not know this, and just experience funnies or other issues that you might not associate with your network at all. I certainly wouldn’t rely on ‘if it works’ it must be ok…
If the seller doesn’t commit to resetting the memory I wouldn’t touch it unless I was comfortable with resetting the memory myself.

15

That’s fine, if you know what you are doing of course, and know what software build you are running… I assumed you wanted a quick and easy set of instruction to reset the memory… good luck

16

Hmmm…in that case it looks like I might have to dig out that pesky blue cable again!

17

All done and reset. I think in fact it had already been reset but I feel more comfortable having blundered through the process myself. Thanks to all.

18

I definitely has to reset the last one I got…

The vendor had done a ‘Factory Reset’ using the <Mode> button, but had still left configured flash:config.text and flash:vlan.dat files. They need to be removed using the console, as 7 of the ports were configured to be inactive (or at least not taking part in the port scan used to determine what ports were connected); ‘rebasing’ the configuration to factory defaults sorted it.

19

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.