Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

Factory Reset Nortel IP Phone

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I know I’ve been asked this question quiet frequently and I finally got around to digging up the answer. Here are the details from the Nortel technical configuration guide with a few grammar changes and some formatting thrown in.

You can factory reset a Nortel IP phone that is already running UNIStim firmware release 3.0 or later.  You will need to be running the following firmware at a minimum for this procedure to work;
IP 1110 (0623C6E), IP 1120E (0624C6E), IP 1140E (0625C6E), IP 1150E (0627C6E), IP 1210 (062AC6E), IP 1220 (062AC6E), IP 1230 (062AC6E), IP 2001 (0604DCD), IP 2002 (0604DCD), IP 2004 (0604DCD), and IP 2007 (0621C6D).

The UNIStim firmware release 3.0 for IP Phones introduces the ability to restore an IP Phone to a “factory default” configuration. This can be useful when redeploying an IP Phone from one location to another, when starting to use an IP Phone with unknown history, or to reset to a known baseline configuration.

With UNIStim firmware release 3.0, and greater, the following keypad sequence is used to reset all provisioning parameters to a “factory default”:

[*][*][7][3][6][3][9][MAC][#][#]

Where the MAC corresponds to the MAC address of the IP Phone which can be found on a label on the back of the IP Phone.

Since a MAC address can contain the letters A through F, the letters A, B and C can be entered via the [2] key on the dial pad, and letters D, E and F can be entered via the [3] key.

For example, an IP Phone with MAC address 00:19:E1:E2:17:12 would be reset to “factory default” when the sequence **73639001931321712## is entered on the keypad.

Cheers!

You might also want to read these other posts...

  1. Factory Reset Nortel Ethernet Switch
  2. Nortel IP Phone 1200 Series
  3. Factory Reset Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch

Comments

  1. There is an error in the bulletin which will shortly be corrected. The “factory reset” key sequence does not work on IP Phone 2001/2002/2004. It does work on IP Phone 2007/11xx/12xx.

  2. Hello Michael,

    We’ve had a rollout by BT in the UK, and the phones were ALL manually configured during the rollout by BT.

    We’ve noticed a number of problems (pc port speed / duplex etc) and want to be able to “wipe” the configuration put on by BT and have all the settings roll out automatically on phone bootup.

    We first send to the phones, a nortel i2004 B string, and then the rest of the settings are transferred via a tftp server using the .PRV files. This seems to work for all new phones ok but we have 1 problem…

    Manual settings on phones, take precedence over automatically sent configuration, so we can never remotely correct problems made by the vendor who rolled these out, unless we can set all the configuration back to “auto”.

    The easiest way I could think to do this was to factory reset all the phones? But ideally I don’t want to have to visit all several hundred phones to do this?!?

    Is this something that can also be done remotely? We can SSH to the phones but that’s only so useful. I can even see a file named something like config.dat… and would love to be able to modify it, but can’t work out how to do that…

    Have you got any ideas how we can set settings to “auto” remotely? Without manual intervention? This seems like an EXTREMELY basic thing to want to be able to do…

    thanks in advance for any help at all. The only thing I can think of, would be to be within the vxshell (so dropping into the unix, and modifying the text in the configuration file…but obviously we can’t do that??)….

    cheers in advance

    • Hi Luke,

      I’ll be straight up with you, to my knowledge there is no way to accomplish a factory reset short of physically visiting the phones.

      It’s extremely important to configure the phone properly when it’s first deployed, else you could eventually end up having to re-visit every phone to verify its configuration. I also stage our IP phones (configure, and upgrade) before deploying them. It’s worked very well that we now have a standard configuration no matter the physical location of the device.

      I’m assuming that you’ve asked BT, or had BT ask Nortel directly.

      The real question is can you override the manual settings through the use of the Nortel-i2004-B string or the PRV files. I don’t believe you can but I’ll be honest and tell you I haven’t really played much with the Nortel-i2004-B string of the PRV files.

      There are some discussions over on the forums that might be of interest; http://forums.networkinfrastructure.info/nortel-ip-telephony/

      Sorry I couldn’t be of more help. Good Luck!

  3. Hello Mike,

    Thanks for such a speedy reply! That’s what I was expecting unfortunately as Nortel state that the order is as follows…

    Manual (Highest priorty)
    TFTP
    Nortel-i2004-B
    Nortel-i2004-A
    Last auto received values (lowest priority)

    I expect we’re stuffed and will have no choice but to visit each phone but thanks very much! :D

    cheers
    Luke

  4. Has the keypad sequence been released to factory-default the i2002 and i2004 phones? Can’t seem to find the bulletin.

  5. There is no factory default sequence for IP Phone 2001/2002/2004 and will highly unlikely to be implemented now that those phones are manufacture discontinued.

    • Thanks again for the feedback Gord.

      While the phone might be discontinued I’m guessing there’s a huge install base of i2002/i2004 IP phones. And if Avaya/Nortel want to be successful it will be very important for them to avoid alienating their existing install base.

      I only recently discarded the first generation i2004 IP phones, the purple Barney phones as we liked to call them.

      We’ll obviously hear more come this Tuesday, January 19th.

      Thanks!

  6. Hi Michael,

    we have 1140e ip phone in which when i talk though the handset the other party can hear me good. but when i talk through the wired headset the other party informs me my voice is very low. Is there a setting in the phone to correct this issue. As well when i call through headset internally they hear a faxtone in background and when i press the mute key it goes off. Please help me out on this.

    Thanks
    Antony

    • Hi Anthony,

      Your post really isn’t on-topic for the thread (Factory Reset Nortel IP Phone) but I’ll try to help.

      I would also suggest you post over in the discussion forums.

      What type of headset are you using? You should not be using an amplified headset with the 1140e. I suspect this is probably your issue.

      Good Luck!

  7. when do you type this code in? During boot up or after bootup when the phone is idle?

    Thanks,

    dan

    • Hi Dan,

      I can’t really say having never done it myself personally. I would think that you could do this anytime the phone is powered up but definitely once the up is booted and up and running.

      Cheers!

      • I know that this post is 3yrs old, but I have several 1140e phones that are in constant re-boot when they are powered up. I believe that it has something to do with the Firmware upgrade that has been munched, and so fails during the upgrade process.and causes the phones to reboot. I feel that a Factory reset might fix this issue, but need to know when I can do this as the phone never gets to a stable state.
        New phones do not seem to have this problem, just the odd phone that could have been used for testing previously.
        Any help would be great!!

        Paul
        Toronto, Canada

        • Hi Paul,

          I believe you should be able to factory reset the IP phone anytime after the software has actually loaded. It sounds like your not sure if there’s even a software release installed on the IP phone. I would suggest posting more details over in the discussion forums;

          http://forums.networkinfrastructure.info/nortel-ip-telephony/

          What’s on the display as the IP phone boots up, etc. When does it reboot, how long, how often, does it actually connect to a Call Server (CS1000/BCM)?

          Good Luck!

          • Michael,

            Thanks for your response.
            I have since learned that all of our rebooted 1110, 1120 and 1140 phones had had bad firmware copied up to them as the files had all become corrupt somehow. Each time a phone was rebooted it would go into a constant reboot after attempting to download a corrupt FW version.
            Our 3rd party phone company has since fixed the issues and we seem to be ok now :)
            (Power outages can really show you where you issues are .., as these are the only times that our POE phones actually get reset .. , and I am glad that only a few of our 100’s of phones reset, or we would have been in big trouble! ..lol)

            Once again, thanks for your response

            Sincerely,

            Paul J.
            Toronto, Canada

  8. We have converted the 1120e phones from Unistem to SIP protocol. The factory reset does not work any more. Does anyone know if there is a new key sequence or any other way to “factory” reset the phone?

  9. So I received from IP phone 1220 today and I am unsuccessfully trying to program it. It seems to have some other type of SIP programming already in it and the factory default is not working. I cannot get the phone to input a TFTP server….any advice anyone? The phone is a brick now.

    The SIP program is not Nortel. It’s some other system….the ring tones are totally different, etc. It doesn’t give me an option upon configuration to enter a TFTP server!

  10. After a long fight with the phone I found the network settings and was able to link up with the tftp server.  
    The phone loaded all the necessary settings.  

    Then I tried disabling the extended feature set which creates “no requests” for licensing but it took me a while to get the names of the cfg files correct.  
    The phone continually wouldn’t respond to my reboots to read tftp.

    Finally I factory reset the phone and was hoping it would be easy to set the tftp address but some message “can’t find zero” kept popping up and I couldn’t press apply for the changes. I finally chose auto/manual just for that setting and the settings around provisioning server and somehow it worked.  I assume some other 0=no and 1=yes or other non used ip address server was interferering.

    I had to change the 12xxboot.cfg to the xx notation for the phone to read the boot file, kind of backwards as one would think it would wanting name of the phone not xx. Then I was finally able to get the phone to use the users.dat file and now the extended licensing says “no request” and the phone works.

    Whatever system this phone was on sucked compared to a Nortel set.  It had terrible chirpy ring tones and half the buttons didn’t work.  I didn’t know you could use other vendors firmware on these phones.  

    The display is a but junked up compared to the 11xx. The DN key won’t fully show my number, just half the number. Is there a way to change that so it just reads my name? Also the display says 116477 (my user name) once again next to the time and date, I don’t need it twice.  Is there a way to get rid of that?  Under that reads Avaya sip client and I am fine with that. 

    Thank you again for all of your help!  

    Joe

  12. Hi Michael,

    I’m using 1210 phones to connect to an Asterisk server, and so far have gotten everything right, except one – the licensing issue. I’ve managed to track it down to the fact that SIP_TLS_PORT on the phones is still set to 5061, and not 0, as it should be, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to change this. Setting it in the config file doesn’t seem to make a difference (as I read here: http://forums.networkinfrastructure.info/nortel-ip-telephony/sip-firmware-3-2-for-ip-deskphones-about-licensing) and if I try to set it using the phone UI (pressing the globe button twice), as soon as I hit the globe button, the phone freezes and reboots itself.

    I have managed to get into the phone via SSH (this is where I discovered that the setting was incorrect), and have tried to do a factory reset, and reload the files (using both the key combo as well as the reset2factory command via SSH), but doing this via the key combo seems to power the phone off, and leave it that way, and doing this via the reset2factory command consistently fails with “Wrong MAC address”. I have tried entering the MAC address in various formats (additional to the format specified in the manual) but to no avail.

    Could you perhaps assist me in this regard?

    Thanks in advance,

    Sylvester

    • I’ve factory reset a few 1120e and 1220 IP phones using the process above without issue.

      Unfortunately I don’t use those IP phones as SIP handsets so I haven’t run into the issue you’re describing.

      You didn’t mention what version of software you were running, or if you had tried the latest and greatest?

      Good Luck!

  13. Hi,

    I know this is a old thread but for the issue i am facing with 1230 sip its the most appropriate thread.
    My issue is i have one 1230 phone which i upgraded to sip 4.4 and registered with CUCM 9.0 the phone was working fine but the license part its displaying one token is required and the phone is in evaluation mode further digging the issue found that SIP TLS was activated no matter what i push via config file the CUCM was superseding which we resolve after opening a TAC with Cisco. Now if i check license no additional feature is activated, but still the License is showing as Token released and the evalution timer is still ticking. Can some guide me how to resolve this issue. As i have to migrate more than 400+ to cisco..

    Thanks in Advance.

  14. I have an i2004 NTDU82 that I used a few years ago but the network the phone connected to from my house to work no longer exists.

    Thus I have no password or user or clue how to get into the phone, it just says server unreachable, Restarting in 20s.

    How do I factory reset this phone if I don’t know it’s mac address, or how to I get the mac address or etc.. ANY help or point in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

    • Hi Korelian,

      Unfortunately the factory reset option is rumored to not work with the i200x series IP phones. You should be able to find the MAC address on a label on the backside of the IP phone, although it won’t do you much good because the factory reset process doesn’t work with the i200x series as I’ve said above.

      You could plug the IP phone into a hub and run a packet trace on all the packets the phone is sending. That might help you determine what IP address the phone is configured for and more importantly what TFTP server it’s trying to poll. If you setup a temporary TFTP server at that IP address you could conceivably reconfigure the IP phone via TFTP configuration files.

      Good Luck!

  17. Hi Michael,

    I purchased 8 used 1120e 2007 Version with firmware 0624C4A. The **73693MAC## doesn’t work on these phones.

    We have a BCM 450 and this is what I get when I boot the phones.

    Waiting for Cfg Data…
    Couldn’t identify switch
    Starting DHCP
    Connecting to S1
    Server unreachable
    Restarting in 30s
    Locating Server
    then it looks for S1 again and it keeps looping

    I’ve installed this model in the past and the firmware would update from the BCM. I can’t change anything on the phone, i can’t even see the network configs on it. I can’t factory reset it either. Any help or pointers is really appreciated.

    Thanks,
    Agim

  18. For those of you who are stumped with trying to remove a DN from the 2004 models, i have figured it out. After digging around the settings for a DN on our BCM Element Manager I came across an option to deregister DN. This essentially resets the IP Phones DN that is assigned to it to be blank, prompting you to enter a new one when it boots back up.

    Once in your BCM Element Manager, go to the Configuration tab and then navigate to Telephony>Sets>Active Sets and find the current DN the IP Phone has assigned to it. Once you have that DN selected you will want to click the “Capabilities and Preferences” tab at the top. Once that is selected you should see a tab in the bottom of the Active Sets pane called “IP terminal Details” In this tab you will see an option to Deregister DN. once you click this, it will remove the DN from the IP Phone and you can now assign that set a new DN.

    I just discovered this after months of having to put what were essentially bricked IP Phones on the storage shelf. I can now reclaim about a dozen handsets that were once useless.

  19. I got some used Nortel 1210 IP Phones. I tried the **73639MAC##. I got Rebooting, etc.

    But the phones always try to connect outside. Is there some hard reset somewhere? Or some ways to recover access to the phones

  20. Is this way working with AVAYA 1230 F/W V 062AC8J?
    I try the code **73639 + MAC + ## but nothing happens!

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