I recently acquired a used Cisco Catalyst 3560 and I am trying to factory reset it. When I enter the recovery process (by holding MODE), I get stuck in this loop at the "switch: " prompt.
How do I resolve this issue?
Best Answer
Sounds like a nice job of a botched content ot the boot variable - possibly the config file variable. The switch: prompt you see there is called the ROMMON prompt. ROMMON is a bit like the BIOS of a PC, but a lot simpler.
Your switch seems to fall back into bootloader/rommon continously because something after the bootloader phase is failing.
The most common cause for that is: IOS Software image not readable/loadable at the location give in the boot directive/boot variable.
use the mode button procedure during power-up to force the switch into bootloader/rommon, avoiding a full boot attempt.
use flash_init to make the flash filesystem availabe/readable
use set (no parameters or options) to see the environment variables during the rommon/bootloader stage. It will tell you which file is being searched as IOS image to boot, or if there is a directive to read a particular config file (which might be missing). Please note: the variables here (e.g. IP address, Mask, Gateway to boot via TFTP) are only meaningful for the boot process, they have nothing to do with the configuration of the switch when it will eventually run and load its config file.
use dir <filesytem> (probably as dir flash:) to see if that or another IOS image file is available somewhere in the flash filesystem.
use set <variable> or unset <variable> commands to manipulate variables as you see fit, or...
use boot flash:/<iosimagefile> to force the loading of the given IOS image file1
Then, when booted, make sure that in running-config and/or startup-config, the boot system flash flash:/iosimagefilename directive points to a file that actually exists - or is blank. An empty boot file directive usually works, because the switch will usually attempt to boot from the first available IOS-image on flash.
The primary purpose of the no setup express command is to prevent
someone from deleting the switch configuration by pressing the Mode
button for 10 seconds.
G0/3 appears to be shut down. I suspect that SVI VLAN 110 is up because it exists on another port (G0/11) that is not shut down, and thus spanning-tree for VLAN 110 is up, while it is down for VLAN 98. You can confirm that by issuing the commands 'show spanning-tree vlan 110' and 'show spanning-tree vlan 98'. You'll probably get something like "Spanning tree instance(s) for vlan 98 does not exist."
Best Answer
Sounds like a nice job of a botched content ot the boot variable - possibly the config file variable. The
switch:
prompt you see there is called the ROMMON prompt. ROMMON is a bit like the BIOS of a PC, but a lot simpler.Your switch seems to fall back into bootloader/rommon continously because something after the bootloader phase is failing. The most common cause for that is: IOS Software image not readable/loadable at the location give in the boot directive/boot variable.
Using information from here... https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst3560/software/release/12-2_52_se/command/reference/3560cr/bootldr.html
... I suggest you proceed as follows:
flash_init
to make the flash filesystem availabe/readableset
(no parameters or options) to see the environment variables during the rommon/bootloader stage. It will tell you which file is being searched as IOS image to boot, or if there is a directive to read a particular config file (which might be missing). Please note: the variables here (e.g. IP address, Mask, Gateway to boot via TFTP) are only meaningful for the boot process, they have nothing to do with the configuration of the switch when it will eventually run and load its config file.dir <filesytem>
(probably asdir flash:
) to see if that or another IOS image file is available somewhere in the flash filesystem.set <variable>
orunset <variable>
commands to manipulate variables as you see fit, or...boot flash:/<iosimagefile>
to force the loading of the given IOS image file1Then, when booted, make sure that in
running-config
and/orstartup-config
, theboot system flash flash:/iosimagefilename
directive points to a file that actually exists - or is blank. An empty boot file directive usually works, because the switch will usually attempt to boot from the first available IOS-image on flash.