Cisco WLC Password Recovery

In this article we will go through step by step process for recovering the password of Cisco WLC 5508. My current version of WLC is 8.5.151.

My laptop is connected to WLC via Console cable. If you could see below, password we are entering is not working.

Restart the controller (you need to have physcial access to the controller)

Do not press “ESC” and let the image loads completely

Once WLC boots completely, it will prompt for the username.

Type “Restore-Password” and enter. Kindly note, you can’t reset the password of existing account (admin in my case) you can only configure new user (as you can see below I was trying to reset the password of admin account and its giving the error)

It will prompt for resetting the system, type “n” and restart the controller again.

Once the WLC is restarted, enter the new username and password.

As you can see below, We can access the WLC now using new username and password.