Symbol is a large company when it comes to technology products and even wireless devices. Symbol offers a more affordable alternative to Cisco while still including some of the functionality of Cisco products. Symbol like Cisco and unlike Netgear or the Linksys models does not have a switch on the back to allow you to simply reset the wireless to factory defaults. Like Cisco equipment you have to have physical access to the wireless to reset it if you have forgotten your password. Here we will step you through reseting a Symbol AP 5131 Access Point.

To reset this access point you need to have a computer with a serial port, physical access to the wireless, and a null modem cable (I also found the a blue Cisco rollover cable works too). You can check out my other articles on how to make a roll over cable for Cisco equipment.

First you want to connect your null modem cable to the wireless and connect to it through hyperterm, PuTTY, or your favorite terminal emulation program. You need to make sure that you baud rate is set at 19200 or you will not connect to the wireless. If you have successfully done this you will get to a login propmt on the Symbol wireless. Now I am assuming that you don’t know the password since you are reading this document on how to reset the wireless. So by getting the login prompt you know that you are connected properly to the wireless and we can continue on with resetting it.

Now remove the LAN cable or power connection and reinsert it to reboot the wireless and you should see information display on your terminal session.  You should see “Press ESC key to run boot firmware” message on the screen and you have to press the ESC key within 3 seconds of this message being displayed or you have missed your chance. If you miss your chance, no worries just pull the LAN cable or power connection again to reboot the wireless again.

If you have successfully pressed the ESC key in enough time you should receive a boot> prompt and simply type:

passwd default

and then

reset system

You have now reset the wireless password to “symbol” and you have reboot the wireless again. Once the wireless starts back up you should be able to log into it with admin and symbol without a problem. From here you can change anything else you want and even reset the password to a non default password for more security.