A year ago we noticed a very annoying problem with the Cisco IOS 15.2(2)E7 and 15.2(2)E8 versions. When deployed on 2960S stacks configured to be VTP client. The stack starts the boot process, but only the master was alive, other stack members were stuck in a reboot loop with a crash report.
The only way to solve the issue was to roll back to previous 15.2(2)E6 version that which was relatively old already. The TAC pointed me out that we’re probably affected by the bug CSCvd23231. And the only workaround at this time was to switch to VTP transparent mode before installing the E7 or E8. The workaround was working fine, but when switching to client mode again and restarting the stacks the problem was always the same. So the only stable solution was to keep the E6 version.
The 2960s isn’t any more supported by Cisco for software bug fix, so the E6 was probably the last version we would use before replacing our switches of this model. But to our surprise, a new E9 version has been released in September and this is the new recommended version (no longer the 15.0 branch).
This update at the end of the life cycle of the equipment is probably related to the very large number of 2960s still existing among Cisco customers.
So, if you were previously stuck with a 2960S stack reloading issues, you can safely move to the 15.2(2)E9 version!