Cisco 2960L problem resetting to "factory default"

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Background

I have a number of 2960L's (cisco WS-C2960L-8PS-LL, running Version 15.2(6)E to be exact). So far they've been working fine (mostly).

My application is very primitive. I am using these in manufacturing test stations to power up and configure some PoE-based devices that we are manufacturing. I am literally just using them as power sources, DHCP servers and LAN for a factory workcell (no routing to outside network). The "network" consists of just the 2960L switch, a PC with a patch cable going into one of the switch ports and the other ports get plugged in whenever we configure devices at the factory.

I had been successfully configuring the switches by following the "Easy Setup Guide". Basically you take it out of the box, power it up, connect an ethernet cable to a laptop configured to get it's IPaddress from DHCP and follow directions using the web interface provided by the switch at it's default IP (10.0.0.1).

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Problem

Unfortunately, while configuring the last one, I got dragged into something and had to leave it for several days. When I came back I figured I could "reset to factory default" following directions in the Easy Setup Guide and start over. That's where the problems started. The setup guide has instructions for performing a "factory reset" so I got a USB cable launched a terminal emulator and did the following:

mySwitch>enable Password: ***** mySwitch#erase startup-config Erasing the nvram filesystem will remove all configuration files! Continue? [confirm] [OK] Erase of nvram: complete mySwitch>reload 

At this point I removed the usb cable, waited for the LED's to indicate full boot, and then tried to connect my laptop as before. Unfortunately, the switch isn't giving my laptop an ipaddress like it did before and so I can't use the instructions in the Easy Setup Guide. So, I reconnected the USB cable, and saw that there was this on the console:

Would you like to enter the initial configuration dialog? [yes/no]: no Would you like to terminate autoinstall? [yes]: yes 

I really really don't want to get lost in the CLI of this thing, so I terminated the "autoinstall" hoping that it would just be like it was when I first took it out of the box (that's what "factory reset" means, right?). Unfortunately... that didn't work either, it did not give my laptop an ipaddress, and worse, when I went back in to the CLI, and did an "sh run" I saw that it didn't even have the factory default ipaddress 10.0.0.1 (it had none, "no ip address" for vlan1).

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If there's no way to get this thing back to actual factory default. I would really like to do the following without going insane:

• Assign an ipaddress and netmask.
• Make it become a DHCP server, so when I plug in my laptop, it will give my laptop an ipaddress.

If I can do this, I think I can get back to the web interface of this switch and finish my configuration.

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As I said, I have a very primitive setup-- I don't care about vlans other than vlan1, just want to connect a PC to one of the ethernet ports and use the thing for DHCP, power and communication with devices on the other ports. Any advice would be much appreciated as I am stuck!

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