Today I was working on the ASA and I found out that I don’t have a login password for it. So, to reset the ASA password I followed the following steps;

  1. Power cycle the ASA by unplugging and plugging back in the power adapter.
  2. While restarting, press ESC to enter the ROM Monitor mode. prompt should look like (rommon#0)
  3. Enter command confreg. This will show the current configuration register, which should be 0×00000001. Say NO to change prompt
  4. Change configuration register to 0×41 to ignore the Startup-configuration on boot. to do this type (rommon#1) confreg 0×41
  5. Reset the ASA with (rommon#2) boot command
  6. ASA will reboot and show the default prompt ciscoasa>
  7. Do ciscoasa>enable and press Enter
  8. Press Enter. (Password is blank)
  9. You should be in privileged mode ciscoasa#
  10. Run ciscoasa# copy start run
  11. Destination File name [running-config]
  12. Enter the ASA configuration mode. ciscoasa# config terminal
  13. Now set the new password of your choice. ciscoasa(config)# enable password yourNewPassword
  14. Change configuration register back to 0×00000001 to boot from startup-config. ciscoasa(config)# config-register 0×01
  15. Save the running-config to startup-config. ciscoasa# copy run start
  16. Reload the ASA. ciscoasa# reload

After successful reload, you will be able to use your newely created password in STEP 13.

Enjoy!!!

~Robbie Deol