How to Reset Password on Cisco ASA 5500

Password recovery is a very handy feature if you have worked with Cisco products for some time. Every now and then you will run into a device that was configured by someone else who is no longer with the organization and you will be stuck with it.

I will try to describe how to recover a password on a Cisco ASA 5500.

• Login to your Cisco ASA using the Serial CAble aka Blue Cable.
• Go ahead and reboot the Cisco ASA
• During the bootup process, hit the Escape key to enter into the ROMMON mode.
• Enter the following command so Cisco ASA will ignore the startup configuration at next reload.

rommon #0> confreg

• You will see the following output that shows the current configuration register value.

Current Configuration Register: 0×00000011
Configuration Summary:boot TFTP image, boot default image from Flash on netboot failure
Do you wish to change this configuration? y/n [n]:

• Make a note of your current configuration register value
• At the prompt, enter Y to change this value
• Accept the default values for all settings, except for the “disable system configuration?” value; at that prompt, enter Y.
• Reload the Cisco ASA 5500 by entering the following command.
• rommon #1> boot
• At this point Cisco ASA 5500 will boot into the default configuration instead of startup configuration.
• Enter privileged EXEC mode by typing enable

At this point you can either load the startup configuration OR just start fresh. I didn’t have any configuration to lose so I went ahead and started fresh.

Don’t forget to change the configuration registration value back .

hostname(config)# config-register 0×00000011

Save the configuration and you are good to go!