Reset root password without alternate boot?

[Alan Dayley]

On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 7:50 PM, Charles Jones
<charles.jones at ciscolearning.org> wrote:
> Removing the hard drive on a laptop is not a big deal, at most
> temporarily removing 2 screws. Then you can plug it into an IDE to USB
> adapter
> (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002), and
> plug it into a linux box to mount and edit your /etc/shadow file and
> remove the encrypted password. Then unmount, slap it back into the
> laptop and login as root with no password where you are then free to
> change it.

Thanks, Charles.

You are right, removing the drive is not too hard.  I installed Linux
on this computer with the current hard drive attached to a desktop
computer.  Removing the drive was just more work than I wanted to do
this afternoon.

Thankfully I remembered the password in this case so I did not have to
do any more work.

Alan