I got a call today from a colleague who was on site and needed to factory reset a Fortigate 60E but didn’t have a serial to USB cable. I immediately thought of how often I take having a console cable and serial to USB cable for granted.
If you have the proper tools, performing a factory reset is pretty straightforward:
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Login in via SSH
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Enter the following command and confirm
#exec factoryreset
*This operation will reset the system to factory default!
Do you want to continue? (y/n)*After that, the system will reboot and you’re set. In this case, we didn’t have the luxury of the console. I naturally told him to press the reset button. He told me he had tried that and it did not work.
I performed research and I landed on a forum post where someone mentioned that the firewall has to be reset within the first 20-30 seconds of the device booting up. I was initially confused about the term powering on. I had my colleague power the device on and then after 20-30 seconds hit reset. This did nothing.
Upon further research, I found the reset button needs to be pressed within the first 20-30 seconds after* the device has fully booted up*. With this being the case, the sequence of events is as follows:
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Unplug the power.
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Watch and wait for the LEDs to start to blink (LAN, WAN and STA LEDs).
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5 seconds after the STA LED blinks, press the small reset button at the back using a paper clip, keeping it pressed until you see the LEDs blink orange, then red.
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At this stage, you can release the button.
Once this is performed you have manually factory-reset your Fortigate firewall!