I changed the password on a RB this morning by copying and pasting from Excel. Immediately after saving and closing, I tried to access the RB with a paste from the SAME copy and could not get back in. Proceeded to try Winbox, telnet, mac telnet, etc, manually typing the password and copying and pasting again to no avail. While trying to figure out what happened I copied and pasted the excel cell into notepad and noticed that it included a carriage return. So it appears that the <CR> was accepted in winbox when I changed it originally, but can't be duplicated when trying to login. I have tried passing it with all the combinations I know of.... ALT013, \r, ^M, etc.

So, can anyone suggest a way to get back into this RB without going on site, wiping and reprogramming?

Thanks
Ed

P.S. Do NOT copy and paste passwords from Excel! :-\

Winbox does not accept ctrl or alt buttons, I think that password was mistyped.
If you are not able to get the correct password and there is no any other account on the router.
The only way to recover the router password by reinstall (with Netinstall and without saving old configuration).

It is not possible to paste <CR>. Maybe you have copied 'space'?

Just done this myself in the middle of a major upgrade to a remote site *smacks head* Did you ever find what was added to the password? I'd rather not netinstall on a remote site in the morning

Nope. I don't know why no one can tell us what char or ascii code gets inserted, but we had to net install.

bugger, some poor sod's going for a long trip tomorrow then

For what its worth and counter to MT telling us we would have to net install the router again we worked it out, Using PHP we were able to send the CR as part of the password and managed to get into it!

using PHP? was it Telnet or API connection?

ssh, used php and its ssh library to force send the \r\n at the end of the password, was a real lifesaver