lost password - solutions?

[hoping]

I just got an old laptop (mine from about 4 years ago). I have since forgotten the password. It was running an old version of Kubuntu.

How would you suggest I get it up to running and access that data? FYI - I am a real newb, and don't have any tools.

I was thinking perhaps I could put some sort of partitioning tool in(bootable cd?), shrink the old partition, load linux on the new partition and set it as bootable.Then extract the old files and wipe the old partition,

Is that possible? If so, what tools would you suggest?

[oz]

Hello and welcome!

You can boot the PartedMagic liveCD and use it to grab any data you want off the old disk and move it to a flash drive, external drive, or a spare partition, then use the liveCD for any partitioning work that you want to do. After that, you can install your distro of choice on the newly created and formatted partitions, then restore the data back to the drive where ever you want it, and you should then be good to go.

Another option is to simply reset the password, but I think you'd be ahead to go forward with installing a newer release of your favorite distro.

[devils casper]

I agree with ozar. You should install latest version of any distro instead of using 4 years old Kubuntu. A lot of things have been changed since then.
Data recovery is very easy. Boot up from LiveCD of any Linux distro. Mount Kubuntu partition(s) and copy data to external media like USB stick or HD.