System Login & Password Request on Installation
 

I am trying to install to a system with no windows and before the installation is complete it asks for a login and password. Have you any ideas on what this may be?

You need to provide a login and password, for further use of the system.
Which distribution are you trying to instal?

It's PCLinuxOS 2009, that's all I know

You need to provide the login and password you have entered during install, after you rebooted the system, in order to login.
During install you can choose the login and pass you want.

Alot of distributions set you up a seperate user from root to use as root isn't really suppose to be taken lightly it's a dangerous account to use when it shouldn't be used (I.E. browsing the internet). Thus to help people be more secure alot of distributions will cut down the root account on the GUI and thus ask you to set-up a different user so that you can do normal things like browse the internet or what not, generally then using something like su or sudo for doing super user activities.

I have'nt finished the install, and have never entered a password or user. it let's me go no further as I have no user or password to use.

If this happens at the beginning of the install, the login is
root
password
root


From the wiki
http://www.pclinuxos.com/wiki/index.php/Installation

The prompt you see is a way to prevent you logging into X windows as root. There are actually two prompts during installation:

1. A request for a root password. Very important.

2. A request for a normal-user name and password. Also very important.

The second important because it allows X windows login by a normal user instead of root (which would be dangerous). If you want to move ahead, just type in any reasonable user name and password.

When the system boots up, you are then prompted to log in as the user you entered previously. This is all meant to avoid obvious system vulnerabilities and bad practices.