On SW1, we run show vlan brief and see that there are three additional vlans in use:

SW1#show vlan br

VLAN Name Status Ports
—- ——————————– ———

1 default active Fa0/1, Fa0/2, Fa0/3, Fa0/4
Fa0/5, Fa0/6, Fa0/7, Fa0/8
Fa0/9, Fa0/10
10 VLAN0010 active
20 VLAN0020 active
30 VLAN0030 active

We want to totally erase the router’s startup configuration, so we use the write erase command, confirm it, and reload without saving the running config:

SW1#write erase
Erasing the nvram filesystem will remove all configuration files! Continue? [confirm]
[OK]
Erase of nvram: complete
SW1#rel
00:06:00: %SYS-7-NV_BLOCK_INIT: Initalized the geometry of nvram
SW1#reload

System configuration has been modified. Save? [yes/no]: n
Proceed with reload? [confirm]

The router reloads, and after exiting setup mode, we run show vlan brief again. And even though the startup configuration was erased, the vlans are still there!

Switch#show vlan br

VLAN Name Status Ports
—- ——————————– ———

1 default active Fa0/1, Fa0/2, Fa0/3, Fa0/4
Fa0/5, Fa0/6, Fa0/7, Fa0/8
Fa0/9, Fa0/10
10 VLAN0010 active
20 VLAN0020 active
30 VLAN0030 active

The reason is that this vlan and VTP information is actually kept in the VLAN.DAT file in Flash memory, and the contents of Flash are kept on a reload. The file has to be deleted manually.

There’s a little trick to deleting this file. The switch will prompt you twice to ask if you really want to get rid of this file. Don’t type “y” or “yes” just accept the defaults by hitting the return key. If you type “y”, the router attempts to delete a file named “y”, as shown here:

Switch#delete vlan.dat
Delete filename [vlan.dat]? y
Delete flash:y? [confirm]
%Error deleting flash:y (No such file or directory)

Switch#delete vlan.dat
Delete filename [vlan.dat]?
Delete flash:vlan.dat? [confirm]

Switch#