Linux Mint Forums

by **DarleneWagner** on Wed Feb 13, 2013 3:17 pm

Hello, I'm Darlene from Atlanta. I've recenlty purchased a desktop running on an Intel Pentium 4 3.20 GHz x2 with Linux Mint 14 64-bit pre-installed. Problem is, the owner/root password was not given. I've tried rebooting from Linux Mint 14 64-bit downloaded to a jump drive but the desktop does not read the jump drive when the boot menu is running. Am I doing anything wrong? Thanks.

by **The-Wizard** on Wed Feb 13, 2013 3:24 pm

welcome to the mint family forums

you could try [if your using mint/ubuntu]

in the grub menu highlight the Ubuntu menu entry (NOT the recovery mode)

hit e for edit, then highlight the kernel line and hit e again

remove ro quiet splash from the end of the line and

append it with rw init=/bin/bash and hit Enter then b to boot.

type:

Code:

passwd username

to change the password and press Ctrl+Alt+Del to reboot.

OPTION2:

Boot the LiveCD, mount the root partition, chroot to the partition and change the password.

Assuming that /dev/sda1 is your root ("/") partition:
Code:

sudo mkdir /mnt/ubuntu
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/ubuntu
sudo mount -t sysfs none /mnt/ubuntu/sys
sudo mount -t proc none /mnt/ubuntu/proc
sudo mount --bind /dev/ /mnt/ubuntu/dev
sudo mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/ubuntu/dev/pts
sudo chroot /mnt/ubuntu
passwd username
exit
sudo reboot

by **DarleneWagner** on Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:15 pm

Option 2 sounds like it will work. How do I make a LiveCD?
thank you.

by **mockturtl** on Wed Feb 13, 2013 10:35 pm

DarleneWagner wrote:the desktop does not read the jump drive when the boot menu is running.

Not all motherboards will let you boot from a USB flash drive. (Pentium 4 is ancient. The past seven years of Intel branding use "Core" instead of Pentium -- "Core 2 Duo," "Core i3.")

If it's an option, you probably need to enable it in your BIOS configuration. At the very first screen when you turn the power on -- even before the menu loads -- you'll have to press a special key. Depending on the motherboard manufacturer, it could be delete, F2, F8, or something else.

Once you're in the BIOS setup, look for a category like "boot priority." There should be a list of devices -- hard drive, CD-ROM, network, etc. The system will try to use these in order, so if USB is an option, put it first. Save and exit.