Did you try turning off and back on with your password? If like most, you only
get 3 tries. Others can direct you to using the Ubuntu Live CD to change it
perhaps. Probably similar to changing the Fedora password instructions you
were given.

The Ubuntu wiki can help you with a password reset. I would look closely
at letter case, Linux is case sensitive.
I would think an install yesterday could have the fastest easiest cure
in a re-install. I would consider a password I could easily type in
without errors. In all honesty secure passwords are only important in
business or gov. My password is easy to put in and is not considered
better than poor but no one allowed in my house is anything to worry about.

What I've found is the passwood is "None", i.e. there isn't one. I didn't
see that when I wrote the first email on this password thing. The rub is,
to set a password, i.e. a new one, you have to unlock, so I click the
padlock icon and then I am asked for a password - authenticate it. It's
like a dog chasing it's tail.

In all of this, hours and hours, I've shutdown and restarted just in case
I've tried too many time, like Joan mentioned you 3 chances, I've also had
numerous times when I clicked to shutdown or restart and I get the
secondary little window asking "Do you want to shutdown or restart" ...
yes, shutdown / restart but it doesn't shutdown or restart.

One other irritating thing is that sometimes I just hover the cursor over
something to get the pop-up just to see what it is, and it just goes there
on it's on.

When I stopped for lunch I set it on the desktop with the Panther on the
screen. Nice dark, easy to see the cursor. 20 minutes or so when I come
back, FireFox is open to my gmail page. No one here but me and the ghosts
... LOL!

I'm using my Windows right now. As soon as I send this I'll going to try to
reinstall. I'm not sure how to go about it but I'll come back here and ask
if I can't get it.

You shouldn't be able to set a blank password, and it's also not a
good idea anyway. One of the corner stones of Ubuntu security is this
password to access the system at a low level and it doesn't get in the
way of normal use, unlike the UAC of Windows

BM> What I've found is the passwood is "None", i.e. there isn't one.

When you install you must set a password but you don't have to require
it to log-in. Don't know why anyone would do that but it can be done.

I call myself the Computer
Idiot, but that upsets Leslie, so I can't do that any more. She's
threatened to change my bios so I'm minding my p's and q's ... LOL!

This all started with Fedora 13. The computer was a gift. I had the user
password, but no root password - the user and root were apparently
different. The woes of a used computer. The person that gave it to me
didn't have the root pswd either. With the help of this group, Fedora is
gone and Ubuntu (my choice) is now installed. I hope correctly, cause I
didn't (don't) know what I'm doing, but I'm learning. Anyway, I've
re-installed Ubuntu 3 or 4 times now. I think it's done correctly this
time. I like it so far. There's lots to learn. The computer itself may be
defective. It's a 2005, maybe older - Dell Latitude D810. It'll do until I
learn more. Sorry to ramble on, but I made the mistake looking back of
starting a new thread when a new problem came along, so not all of the
story is here. My fault, looking back. One learns more.

I appreciate all the replies I've received from this group. Never met a
better bunch. Y'all will do to ride the river with - that's a compliment
down here in South Texas.

Gonna shag-out for now ... catch y'all later.........

One thing about passwords, they must be at least 6 characters long. Six
will work. I don't recommend it but easy to remember and easy to
enter. And I like easy, I am easy.

I like easy too, which is why my password is one character. The installation
program whines about it, but allows it.

The D810 had a lot of options, but the minimum specs are here:
reviews.cnet.com/.../4507-3121_7-31268760.html

It should run Ubuntu just fine. In 2005 it was sold as a "business" laptop, so
it probably cost between $1,500 and $3,000.

Thanks for that D810 link. That's pretty much what I see on the bio screen;
I only assume I'm in the bios. Where ever - I do see some of that spec.

I don't see all the specs at that linked page, but remember I don't know my
way around this computer. It probably all there, if I knew where to look.
IF I'm reading this computer correctly this machine's HD is 60GB. An
upgrade perhaps??? The previous owner "was" a business. I'm speculating
here: it started life with XP, there is an XP logo on it. The company that
owed it, computer tech guy, dumped XP and installed Fedora 13. "I think" he
then modified Fedora. There was no software like I see with Ubuntu down the
left side of the screen. There was not even email software, I think it's
called a client. There was something similar to MS Notepad and a basic
calculator. "I think" he, the tech guy, probably stripped (sterilized) all
their data including the software they used and left a bare bones shell -
and they gave them away to their employees - my daughter-in-law being one
of them. She took 3 because there were over 40 just laying around. I found,
what I'll call, 2 user names when I was messing around. As said before it
would not let me download software with a password other that the password
my daughter-in-law provided. She asked the tech guy for the password to the
system and the password he provided did not work. Originally in my
ignorance I referred to the system password as an administrative password,
from our many conversations I now think that I was referring to the root
password. Regardless, even with help from y'all I could not find it - I did
a bunch of looking and typing and clicking because then my attitude was "I
have nothing to loose." Roy pointed out early own that Fedora, IF I could
figure out and change the password was probably too advanced for me - at
least right now. I think he also mentioned it was a business type of
program, or could serve.

Bottom line is I'm behind the power curve and my use of terminology gets me
into trouble.

After the last reinstall, it runs a lot faster than when I said it was
slow. I still may not have followed the proper sequence when I
installed/reinstalled it. The last time, I started it up and pulsed the F2
key until I got the bios or whatever comes up when you do that, and I think
that is the right start point.

I'm not going to put a lot of software or apps, whatever the term should
be, into this thing until I am more familiar with Ubuntu. I'm sold on
Ubuntu. When I get comfortable with Ubuntu I'm going to change my Vista
desktop over; but right now Vista ain't broke, so I'll fix it later ... lol!

I reading everything from the Group. Most I'm clueless, but I'm reading
anyway. I googling and I'll be asking for direction.

You are learning the exact same way we all did - by making mistakes and
learning, slowly and painfully, to correct them. I had the advantage of
teaching computer tech to post secondary students. If a mistake could be
made they would make it! From time to time a student would come to me and
ask for a "system disk" because that was what it asked for on the screen.
Of course that was just geek code for "you don't have an operating system
installed". My other favourite is when they asked "who is General Failure
and why is he reading my hard disk?".

Anyway, keep up the good work. The only advantage most of us have over you
is that we've been making our mistakes for a few years longer and hence
know a tiny bit more. As one of my net admin colleagues (who was a genius
as far as I was concerned) said: "nobody knows it all". My standard advice
to students was: the most important networking you do is not with computers
it's with people. The problems you are unable to solve today may have been
overcome by one of your friends in the trade yesterday. As another tech
told me: everything I know is yours.

you might do it when setting up a MythTV box that will be used by your
wife (who is fluent in Unix CLI, but not *buntu GUI) who wants to see it as
simple as turning on a DVR.

Yes, if you boot into recovery mode, you will get a root command prompt.
You can then add a new password from there, or even create a new
privileged user pretty quickly. Can't help you much on mobile as
autocorrect keep sending infuriating me by changing the commands. But the
relevant direction set you want from Google is likely to pop up with the
following searches:

Ubuntu 11.10 boot into recovery mode

And

Linux command line change user password

There are also ways to do this from live cd, but I am not familiar with
them. (I'm also assuming recovery mode still works it did several years
ago)