Resetting a Cisco 7940/7960 to factory defaults

From time to time a phone may become misconfigured in some way due to manual configuration, old information not being cleared out, software bugs, or some combination of the three.  If this happens, resetting the phone to factory defaults is often the easiest and most reliable way to clean the slate and start fresh with a current, standard configuration.

For the Cisco 7940 and 7960 phones, the process to reset the device follows:

1. Restart the phone, either by removing and reapplying power or by pressing the star (*) key, six key, and the settings button (may have an icon of a check box) simultaneously.
2. While the three lights at the bottom of the phone are still blinking and before the phone's display has turned on, press and hold the pound/hash (#) key.
• If done correctly, as soon as the phone turns on its display it will read "Reset Key Sequence Detected"
• If it displays anything else, such as "Configuring VLAN" or "Configuring IP" you will need to start over and attempt to press the pound key sooner after power-on/restart.
3. At the "Reset Key Sequence Detected" screen, dial the following: 123456789*0#
• This is simply going left to right, top to bottom across the entire dial pad.
• If an error is made, the phone will leave reset mode and switch to displaying "Configuring VLAN" or "Configuring IP" and again starting over will be required.
4. The phone will display a question asking "Save Network Settings?", press 2 for no.
5. The phone will display "Resetting to factory defaults".  At this point the process is complete and the phone can be left alone to reset and reconfigure itself.