Password forgotten / not recognised

If you are suddenly unable to enter your password, this could be because the keyboard layout was accidentally changed.

If you know your password

Do you remember which keyboard layout you selected? It is probably not currently "German (Switzerland)", but for example simply "German«.

Even though the difference may seem small, it has a massive impact on your keyboard. For example, the "@On a German keyboard, the "-" sign is on the Q key, but in Switzerland it is on the 2nd key.

So if you still know your password exactly, proceed as follows:

1. Write down the password.
2. Look where you can find all the characters (for example on Wikipedia)
3. Try to log in

Important: Now immediately change the keyboard layout (Instructions)

If you don't remember your password

To reset the password, the laptop must be started in safe mode.

1. Shut down the laptop
2. Switch it on again and press the ESC buttons several times in quick succession as soon as the manufacturer logo disappears.
3. A menu should now be displayed. Select there Advanced options for Zorin off.
4. Now a new menu appears. Select the top entry here, which is set to (recovery mode) ends.
5. Again, a new menu appears. Select the entry root Switch to the root command line (shell) off.
6. Confirm again with Enter.

Now you should be able to enter other things. You can set a new password with the following command:

passwd user

If you have entered your own user name, you have to enter user with the set name.

Now you can enter a new password and confirm it. 

Select a password without special characters and without the letters y and z. In Safe Mode, the keyboard layout is different.

ATTENTION: No characters will be visible on the screen, even if you press something. Simply enter the new password and confirm with Enter. After that you have to enter the password again and press Enter again. After that you should get a message that the password has been changed successfully.

As soon as this has worked, you can use the command reboot restart the laptop. Now you should be able to log in with the new password.

In case you don't remember your username

If you don't remember the user name, enter the following command:

ls /home

Now something should be displayed. This is your username 🙂