A week ago I installed PC Linux OS on a clean hard drive and it installed and opened as it should . After use I shut it down as normal and waited several days for an extra piece of hard drive to use in the Wi Fi network. On stating up the system it wanted to know host id and host pass word. After some changes in the BIOS and by selecting safe boot mode the following message is on the screen and I would like pointers as to where to go from here or what in the BIOS I have to change to pass this stall in boot up

Message is
Telling INIT to go to single user
Single user
INIT: going to single user
sh-4.1#_ (underscore is flashing and I presume that it is waiting for a typed command to allow the system to move on)
Help on where to find information or a simple instruction would be appreciated

After the installation completes you need to reboot and remove the CD/DVD and you should be prompted to create a root password as well as a regular user and password. Did you complete this? That would be the user name and user password it would want.

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Thank you for that. At the installation this was done and I now boot off the hard drive installation When I enter these pass words the message is "incorrect pass words." I changed the BIOS to boot off the cd and the problem there is that it goes so far then I get a blank black screen and the only way out is to emergency shut down. It is possible that I may have to reformat the HD and reinstall but I do not know how to get to the format hd area to do this as I cannot find any area in BIOS for this or there are no screens allowing this procedure. Have patience as I am strictly new at this

did all that originally but now it will not recognize the pass words or log in details . If I could get a way of reformatting the hd I could start again from installation.

You can re-format the hard drive during the installation. The installer should show an option to "use existing partitions" so if you want the same partition setup use that otherwise use the custom option. Make your selection here then click Next and on the new page select "toggle to expert mode". This gives you options to select a partition and also to format it. The bar near the top will be divided into sections and clicking on them should show you what they currently are.

This is a bit trickier than it used to be, but it usually works. When the grub prompt appears, hit "e", for edit. Edit the kernel, or linux line to append /bin/bash. Then hit CTRL + x to boot up. You should get a bash prompt as root. Use passwd to change the passwords.

while this is well and good advice unfortunately I cannot even get to that point. I have to get past the login command .The login user pass word/id and pass word are not recognized so I need an command line that will get me past that point. I am new to Linux and statements like grub and bash have no meaning to me so the tech language will have to be aimed at a lower level of comprehension.

No, you don't. You don't want to get to the login command on the installed system if you plan to reinstall use the installation medium again. How did you install PCLinuxOS? Did you use a DVD, a flash drive? The formatting during the install would be from that installation medium Just use the DVD/flash drive again. Since you just installed and something went wrong, it would be a lot simpler to just reinstall. When you first boot the computer, you should see a screen specifying which key you need to tap to enter setup. That will get you into the BIOS where you will have a boot tab option and set whichever medium you used previously to install as first boot priority. If you installed it yourself the first time, you would have had to do this.

If you want to try changing the root password for the installed system at the prompt your posted in your initial post you should be able to do that. At the link below start at #8 on the page, enter: passwd at the prompt then each subsequent command shown.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-r...root-password/

so far no good I believe that I have done everything correctly.
I typed in passwd bill and got the next line
new password--I put in a new password and got the next line
confirm password and I typed it in and got the next line
passwd: all authentification tokens updated successfully and on the next line
sh-4.1#_
so I am thinking need to re-boot so went to con,alt,delete combination which has rebooted in the past and got
INIT:switching to level:6
side note here if it means anything when the boot screen is running it eventually finishes at level 6 then after some seconds commences again and ends up with the sh-4.1#_ line.

ctrl+alt+del sometimes deletes last entry.
Try Then restart machine.
Or
Also if you have a DE then you will need to change runlevel after creating user.

well after much button pushing I managed to get back to an installation area where I could install the os again and format the hard drive . I managed to get it open and went through all the task bar items and then shut down the system. I would like to thank all of you for giving advice and it is appreciated as I was starting to despair of the Linux system as being good. Next problem is to find a way of connecting the pc ( in the shed) to the home pc so that I can use it from the shed on the net. best advice yet is system that plugs into the house power by a data cable from the shed pc to a receiver plugged into the power point near the home pc via wifi..Thanks again to all that have commented