This is my first post in what I hope to be a long line of Cisco networking related posts, as I have just gotten my hands on a bit of used Cisco equipment and hope to use it to setup a home lab.

First step of setting up this home lab is to get my two Catalyst 2960s reset to factory defaults. So here is how you do it. Note that I am assuming that you have already established a console connection to the switch.

First,boot up the switch while holding down the MODE button until you see the following appear on the screen

Switch>
Boot Sector Filesystem (bs) installed, fsid: 2
Base ethernet MAC Address: 00:17:0e:17:de:80
Xmodem file system is available.
The password-recovery mechanism is enabled.

The system has been interrupted prior to initializing the
flash filesystem.  The following commands will initialize
the flash filesystem, and finish loading the operating
system software:

flash_init
boot

Then type flash_init

switch: flash_init
Initializing Flash…
flashfs[0]: 547 files, 19 directories
flashfs[0]: 0 orphaned files, 0 orphaned directories
flashfs[0]: Total bytes: 32514048
flashfs[0]: Bytes used: 15487488
flashfs[0]: Bytes available: 17026560
flashfs[0]: flashfs fsck took 11 seconds.
…done Initializing Flash.

Check out the contents of flash and locate config.text and vlan.dat (if it exists).

switch: dir flash:
Directory of flash:/

2  -rwx  564       <date>               vlan.dat
3  -rwx  1914      <date>               private-config.text
5  drwx  192       <date>               c2960-lanbasek9-mz.122-58.SE2
6  -rwx  3096      <date>               multiple-fs
7  -rwx  2289      <date>               config.text

Now delete the vlan.dat and config.text.

switch: del flash:config.text
Are you sure you want to delete “flash:config.text” (y/n)?y
File “flash:config.text” deleted

switch: del flash:vlan.dat
Are you sure you want to delete “flash:vlan.dat” (y/n)?y
File “flash:vlan.dat” deleted

Now type boot, to reboot the switch. Once the switch is rebooted you will see the System Configuration Dialog, and will have the opportunity “to enter the initial configuration dialog”

Additional Resources:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/switches/catalyst-2900-xl-series-switches/24328-156.html

http://www.cahilig.net/2014/04/14/how-reset-cisco-2960-switch-default-settings

http://notthenetwork.me/blog/2013/05/28/reset-a-cisco-2960-switch-to-factory-default-settings/