Major noob, need help!

[Bulhakas]

Hello everyone!

I 've just acquired a new laptop which has linux as its OS and, apparently, the idiots I bought it from added a user password but didn't write it down anywhere. So I just logged as "guest" the first few times, but now there is some sort of security fail-safe mechanism stopping me from loading linux.

Whenever I turn power on, two green leds with padlock drawings will start blinking and sounding a beep. After 1 minute or so, the laptop automatically shuts down. Now, I've tried changing the root password, or whatever you call it, and I managed to, but it still doesn't solve my problem because the beeps are still there and 1 minute isn't enough to create a new user account once linux loads.

I would just call the technical support, but it's 4:12 AM here, and I generally disdain such services, seeing as there's only asinine people on the other side for the most part (at least where I live in).

Any help is greatly appreciated. I have no idea if I have to provide any more info, so if that's the case, just ask.

Thanks!

PS - This is the first time I'm using linux in my entire life.

[Lakshmipathi]

Whats your Linux Distro?
When It boots up did you see GRUB? (something like GURB used to say booting in 5 seconds ) and starts the actual boot process?


If you can get the grub (File:GRUB screenshot.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Go to the line where Kernel has been mention and press "e" for edit and append a "single" at the end of line. and then "Enter" , "Enter" again. it will boot now. But will be landed as "root" user, (probably in text mode). Now you can created new users or reset root password,you need.

EDIT : some more screenshots of grub menu -
GNU GRUB Screenshots - GNU GRUB (GRUB for short) is a boot loader package from the GNU Project. GRUB is the reference implementation of the Mul

[Bulhakas]

Thansk for the reply. It's GRUB, yes.

I've just done as you said, and created a user account. Then I logged in with it and the same thing happened. Does this mean it has nothing to do with security? Could it be faulty hardware? If it is, this probably isn't the place to ask about it. I'm baffled.

[devils casper]

It looks like Graphics Card problem. We have to find out which Linux distro you are using. Boot up in Single User Mode as suggested by Lakshmipathi already. Execute this at prompt :

cd /etc
cat lsb-release
cat issue
lspci | grep -i vga

Post output of above commands here.

[Lakshmipathi]

And also look for any error message by running the command

dmesg

as root.