KDE, has nothing to do with passwords, passwords are all handled by the system. 2008 comes up with the user "user" with no password set and with root, set to ??? (used to be rootme) Now I have no idea what it is?? So open xterm sudo su - (or "sudo gainroot" if you dont have KDE installed) Typed sudo gainroot into xterm. It responded : "Enable RD mode if you want to break your devise" passwd user (This will ask you for the new user password and allow you to set it.) I It responded "password for user can not be changed." passwd (this will ask you to set the root password)It responded " password for user can not be changed." and said nothing about root password