9300 Password Recovery ((free)) Jun 2026

You have approximately 5 seconds. as soon as you see this message. If you miss it, you must power cycle again.

If successful, you will drop into a limited Switch: prompt. This is the GRUB command line. This is the heart of the process.

You will now instruct the switch to ignore its saved configuration—and the forgotten password—during the next boot. 9300 password recovery

the environment variable to ignore the startup configuration: SWITCH_IGNORE_STARTUP_CFG=1 . Boot the system: boot .

Immediately press and hold the Mode button on the front left of the switch. You have approximately 5 seconds

This is an advanced technique used when the onboard flash is corrupted.

To mitigate this risk, Cisco offers the feature. On the Catalyst 9300, you can disable password recovery entirely via the configuration: If successful, you will drop into a limited Switch: prompt

To recover the password on a Cisco Catalyst 9300 series switch without losing your existing configuration, you must interrupt the boot process to bypass the startup configuration. Initial Credentials to Try First