Hi,

Can't get into GRUB to reset root password.
Hitting ESC only toggles between verbose boot information and progress screen. Holding SHIFT does not bring up the GRUB screen for Runlevel editing. Only found correct key strokes once and forgot what they are.

While I'm here, does anyone know how to choose and permamently select a kernel version for bootup?

Thanks,

Vince

A the grub menu, select the entry you want to edit and press e
You'll get a menu with all boot commands for that entry, select the kernel line and press e again which gets you a line editor. Move to the end of the line, remove the splash and quiet options and either append single or 1 then press Escape followed by b
Now it should boot into single user mode.

The best is to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and move your desired entry to be the fist entry and set/leave the default option at 0. Otherwise you can set default to the number of the entry you want to boot by default (but that way has some drawbacks)

I feel you might be hitting esc a little late. May be you have set the time out to 0, so keep hitting esc constantly after you start booting and see what happens.

The second question is as answered by the previous post

if you are having trouble with that timeout value...boot a live cd and mount the partition concerned for where your /boot is....then use root powers to edit the timeout value