I am working at a university that is a Windows shop. They have one Linux machine that is on the network and nobody knows anything about it. It is used to keep track of hardware. People sign in using PHP and the database is MySQL. I do not know which Linux os is running on this machine. I cannot log in from the command prompt, because nobody knows the password and the guy that built the machine is long gone.
The people that I work for wants to transfer or move everything from the linux box to a Windows box. They are afraid that the Linux machine is not going to last forever and if it fails everything is lost.

Is there a way I can get around that login line?
Is there a way to transfer the files from the Linux box to a Windows box?

Yup, of course... we are talking about linux here

The easiest is probably to boot of a LiveCD and then chroot into the box and change the root password. Gentoo has a great documentation that will explain how to chroot.

Then reboot, login with the password you just set.

Then all you have to do is copy the PHP files and check the settings, dump the db and move it all to a wintendo box

Hope this helps.