Cisco Cisco IPS 4255 Sensor

 lists the password recovery methods according to platform.

For more information on when and how to disable password recovery, see 

.

This section describes the two ways to recover the password for appliances. It contains the following 
topics:

For 4200 series appliances, the password recovery is found in the GRUB menu, which appears during 
bootup. When the GRUB menu appears, press any key to pause the boot process. 

You must have a terminal server or direct serial connection to the appliance to use the GRUB menu to 
recover the password.

To recover the password on appliances, follow these steps:

Reboot the appliance. The following menu appears:

GNU GRUB version 0.94 (632K lower / 523264K upper memory)

-------------------------------------------

0: Cisco IPS

1: Cisco IPS Recovery

2: Cisco IPS Clear Password (cisco)

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    Use the ^ and v keys to select which entry is highlighted.

    Press enter to boot the selected OS, 'e' to edit the

    Commands before booting, or 'c' for a command-line.

    Highlighted entry is 0:

Press any key to pause the boot process.

4200 series sensors

Stand-alone IPS appliances

GRUB prompt or ROMMON

AIP SSM

ASA 5500 series adaptive 
security appliance modules

ASA CLI command

IDSM2

Switch IPS module

Password recovery image file

NM CIDS
AIM IPS

Router IPS modules

Bootloader command