[cindysmith]

hey guys

i have a dell mini 9 with ubuntu 10.04 installed on it. I bought it from somebody but they forgot to give me the admin password and i can no longer contact them. There is no password request on bootup and i can access the netbook but i am unable to update the machine or anything like that. I do have an installation cd but it is ubuntu 8.04 and i dont really want to go through the trouble of a reinstallation.

I tried the method below with no luck:

1. Boot the mini 9 while pressing ESC every second
2. When you see the "MBR 2FA:" prompt or similar, the boot process is stopped.
3. Press ENTER and ESC very fast one after the other.
4. You should then see the GRUB menu. Using the up and down arrows, highlight the second option and press ENTER to boot into recovery mode.

Any ideas guys? This is driving me around the bend

thanks

Cindy x

[reflex]

Try holding "shift" during boot. Relevant info about GRUB2.

Background info: A bootloader is the first software loaded off the SSD/HDD. If you're multibooting, it's what gives you the choice of OSs: Windows, Linux, etc. It can also give you choices like "Recovery Mode". And GRUB2 is the bootloader used by recent versions of Ubuntu.

[Isthmus]

Originally Posted by cindysmith

hey guys

i have a dell mini 9 with ubuntu 10.04 installed on it. I bought it from somebody but they forgot to give me the admin password and i can no longer contact them. There is no password request on bootup and i can access the netbook but i am unable to update the machine or anything like that. I do have an installation cd but it is ubuntu 8.04 and i dont really want to go through the trouble of a reinstallation.

I tried the method below with no luck:

1. Boot the mini 9 while pressing ESC every second
2. When you see the "MBR 2FA:" prompt or similar, the boot process is stopped.
3. Press ENTER and ESC very fast one after the other.
4. You should then see the GRUB menu. Using the up and down arrows, highlight the second option and press ENTER to boot into recovery mode.

Any ideas guys? This is driving me around the bend

thanks

Cindy x

Cindy, if worse comes to worse, you can always download the 10.04 ISO here:

Download | Ubuntu

If you don't already have Unetbootin installed in the machine, download it from some other machine and run it. You'll need at least a 2gb USB thumb drive, but a 4GB one is preferable. Use unetbootin to create an image of the ISO file in the Thumb drive. Make sure your boot sequence in your BIOS are set to boot from the USB first. Plug the thumb drive into the computer an start her up. you should now have a running version of 10.04 running from your USB which will give you the option to install. On install you will be ask to create a new Root/Admin account. The whole install and update process should take less than 30 minutes. You'll need an ethernet connection to do all your updates and upload any drivers you might need.

Now you can reload any files you had and configure the machine to your liking. You should be up and running in under an hour.

Good luck.

[cindysmith]

wooohooo it worked !!

i held down the shift key like suggested and pressed the ESC key and got into the grub menu and reset the password.

thank you so much guys, much appreciated

cindy x

[DjBogus31]

Hi, i have sort of a similar problem. I bought my dell mini 910 from a friend who moved to another country. He forgot to give me the Administrator Password. I tried the Hold down the shift key on Reboot and get to the MBR 2FA. But thats as far as i can get to. I think i have an old version of ubuntu. I don't get to the grub menu. I don't think it has one. Any suggestions??? Im no computer tech by any means , so any help would be greatful. Thanks

[reflex]

For older versions of Ubuntu which use an older version of GRUB (this includes the version installed by Dell on the Mini 9), see here: https://answers.edge.launchpad.net/dell-mini/+faq/311

[DjBogus31]

Yesssssssssss. Thanks alot for that link" Reflex"! It worked. I really appreciate it.