I clicked on a window to try to raise it and get a good look. Instead, my screen turned the baby blue mentioned in the subject and I could do nothing else. The mouse cursor was not even visible. It's possible an alternate terminal was available, but I didn't think of it at the time. Eventually I hit the reset button. My Daktech machine has a reset button separate from the power button. The blue went away, but it hung after the CentOS logo appeared. The watch mouse cursor appeared and stayed. I could move it with the mouse, but that was all I could do on that terminal. The possilbility that it might have some major file system checking to do caused me to wait for a few hours, but the nothing changed. It's my expectation that when the logo appears, any file system checking has already been done. Is that correct? What is the incantation to get a text view of the start up so that I can get a hint of what CentOS is waiting for? I manged to boot an old Fedora 14 install, but could not login because I had forgotten the passwords. I'm doing this from Knoppix. On another terminal, I can login to CentOS as root, but do not know what else to do. >From Koppix, I ran fsck on some file systems: root at Knoppix:~# fsck LABEL=sata400-3-slash fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006) e2fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006) sata400-3-slash: clean, 364784/977280 files, 2005224/3907811 blocks root at Knoppix:~# fsck LABEL=sata400-5-var fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006) e2fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006) sata400-5-var: clean, 5650/428240 files, 289518/1710914 blocks root at Knoppix:~# fsck LABEL=sata400-12-homes fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006) e2fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006) sata400-12-homes: clean, 279637/5242880 files, 10138872/20971520 blocks root at Knoppix:~# They ran rather quickly. Should I trust the result? Here is my fstab: # # /etc/fstab # Created by anaconda on Sun Jun 24 18:14:46 2012 # # Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk' # See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info # LABEL=sata400-3-slash / ext3 defaults 1 1 LABEL=sata400-5-var /var ext3 defaults 1 2 LABEL=sata400-12-homes /homes ext3 defaults 1 2 LABEL=ide5-swap swap swap defaults 0 0 LABEL=sata400-6-swap swap swap defaults 0 0 tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0 sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 As you can see, I changed it to use labels instead of UUIDs. /home is a soft link into /homes . How do I change passwords on an install, e.g. my F14, into which I cannot login? I can edit the files from either Knoppix or from a CentoS terminal. -- Michael hennebry at web.cs.ndsu.NoDak.edu "On Monday, I'm gonna have to tell my kindergarten class, whom I teach not to run with scissors, that my fiance ran me through with a broadsword." -- Lily