Need help with lost admin password.. Nothing working
 

I just now got a new computer today from a friend. I have researched all the posts on Google to try to find out how to reset the root password since I do not know it and cannot get ahold of him. Tried remounting, tells me it cannot find it. Tried going through the recovery menu, of course I get the error since it is in read-only. When I tried to go through the fdisk to get it into read-only, it said something about checked etc clean blocks and then sits there. I do not know what to do at this point. Any help would be appreciated

Well, that is easy. You acquire or burn a Live-cd and try to run your computer from there. And wait for your friend to show up to give you the rootpassword.

If you do not know your root password you can reset it by going into rescue mode:
1. Reboot your computer.
2. When the boot loader starts, interrupt it and press 'e' on the specific kernel.
3. Press 'e' once more on a line that starts with kernel.
4. Add 1 at the end of the line, press Enter and then 'b'.
5. Assuming you have CentOS/Redhat, type setenforce 0 and then passwd to change the root's password.

Let us know if you succeeded or not.

Dennis.

Yes, this is the answer for resetting root password.

Welcome to LinuxQuestions. Do you know what distribution is running on the computer?

If running Ubuntu by default it does not have a root password.

I am running Ubuntu with Grub from what I understand. There is a root password on it because I was trying to change the boot sequence to where I could boot it from disk because I do not understand Ubuntu. When I went into the BIOS to boot from disk it told me I needed an admin password to change it.

A BIOS password is independent of the operating system and unrelated to the root password.

Please post the make/model of your computer. Can you ask your friend for the password?

I am not able to ask him for it. It is a Dell XPS 8500.

If a friend gives you a computer with Linux already on it, why don't you simply ask them what the root password is? (Oh, sorry, because you're not able to. OK...)

If the machine has a BIOS password that you can't get past there will probably be a jumper on the motherboard that allows you to reset the BIOS back to factory defaults.

I say forget about trying to reset the root password. Just get in to the BIOS and then install your own operating system.

I can't get into the BIOS because it tells me I need an admin password and their user password isn't working although they were the only user on the system

Please follow the following guide to reset the password for the specified user:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/linux...nutes-or-less/

This makes it sound to me like you are saying the password which your friend used to log in to the computer is not working to get in to the BIOS. Is that right? If so that is to be expected. As michaelk stated earlier "A BIOS password is independent of the operating system"

Like I said, look for a jumper on the motherboard.