Thanks to all for the quick response!! May you get my newsserver back up as fast!! to summarize: Todd Boss < Boot off the CD as though doing an install Break out of the process to the shell prompt. mount the root partition Null out the password field from the shadow file. Shutdown the system & then reboot. You'll have a blank root password once it comes up. You might want to boot into single user mode; just to be safe. or Charlie Mengler < boot off the cd mount / file system from the disk inside the machine onto /foo vi /foo/etc/shadow, null out the password field. reboot and thanks also to fpardo@tisny.com (Frank Pardo) Reddy Muthyala < who made similiar suggestions. great responses from this group always. thanks tom ________________________________________________ "It is the business of little minds to shrink." -- Carl Sandburg Thomas Wingard System Administrator Thinking Machines Bedford, MA. 617-276-0400 X3306