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  • Re: Open Microsoft Surface

    From Dan Purgert@21:1/5 to Andrew W Rambus on Sun Jul 20 15:50:01 2025
    On Jul 20, 2025, Andrew W Rambus wrote:
    Hello , I have a Microsoft Surface 4 ; I bought at a yard sale. ,and I’m trying to turn it on , and I can’t get past the Debian login GNU/Linux 12 login & password !!
    Can someone please help me , open this laptop

    Reinstall your preferred OS over the top.


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    |_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
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  • From Marco Moock@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jul 20 16:00:02 2025
    On 20.07.2025 15:10 Uhr Andrew W Rambus wrote:

    Hello , I have a Microsoft Surface 4 ; I bought at a yard sale. ,and
    I’m trying to turn it on , and I can’t get past the Debian login GNU/Linux 12 login & password !!
    Can someone please help me , open this laptop

    Did you install it?
    Which desktop environment?

    --
    kind regards
    Marco

    Send spam to [email protected]

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  • From Kent West@21:1/5 to Andrew W Rambus on Mon Jul 21 03:00:01 2025
    On 7/20/25 07:45, Andrew W Rambus wrote:
    Hello , I have a Microsoft Surface 4 ; I bought at a yard sale.  ,and
    I’m trying to turn it on , and I can’t get past the Debian login GNU/Linux 12 login & password !!
    Can someone please help me , open this laptop


    You can make guesses, like "admin / admin", but that's likely to be unsuccessful.

    If you can boot from external media, you can mount the / directory of
    the Surface and edit /etc/passwd (I think just remove the "X" from
    'root's line, but it's been so long I'd have to double-check, and this
    also assumes a standard setup on the Surface).

    However, I would not trust a system that I didn't either personally
    install, or that came from a known trusted source. I would reinstall the
    system from scratch.


    --

    Kent

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  • From Hans@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jul 21 19:20:01 2025
    Am Montag, 21. Juli 2025, 02:56:02 CEST schrieb Kent West:
    On 7/20/25 07:45, Andrew W Rambus wrote:
    Hello , I have a Microsoft Surface 4 ; I bought at a yard sale. ,and
    I’m trying to turn it on , and I can’t get past the Debian login GNU/Linux 12 login & password !!
    Can someone please help me , open this laptop

    If you are able to boot from another device like an USB-stick with a linux- livefile on, you may mount the partition with /etc/passwd on. Then you can edit /etc/passwd to a blank password (in /etc/passwd remove the "x", so that it looks like

    root::root:0:0:root:/bin/bash

    Then you should be able, to boot into without any password. If success, then add a new root password.

    Another option is, to use "Kon-Boot"-live system, this passes the password question and gives you full access to the system.

    Kon-Boot (aka KonBoot), is available for Windows, Linux and MacSystems. There are two versions available 1.0 and 2.0. Old 1.0 is no more downloadable but can be used from the Falcon4-Live-CD and (if remember correctly) also from Hiren's-Boot-CD.

    Hope this helps,

    good luck!

    Hans

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