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At my work they were throwing away computers so I saved a Dell laptop from the dumpster. I just have the computer and the charger.

It's pretty beat up, but works fine. On it is Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. The previous user (probably my boss) didn't give me his password, and I'd probably prefer to delete his data anyways, but at the moment I can only login with a guest account.

I would like to reset the system from the guest account, or know what I can do to use the computer as the new user. I would prefer not to bother my boss because he might be worried that I would access his information.

MicroMachine
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  • best approach, erase the disk and install from scratch..., that way also you could choose a light desktop (xfce/lxde), install only the software that you want/need and customize it as you like, without hiting the wall of an already used system. Finally if you erase securely (shred) the disk, your boss will be happy. – bistoco Jul 09 '16 at 05:19
  • @bistoco Thanks a lot! Could you provide a couple of steps on how to do this or links? As I said I'm totally new to the system and find it confusing – MicroMachine Jul 09 '16 at 05:24
  • first you must erase securely the hard drive, to do this, you could use shred from a live cd, something like this. It will take a while since it writes every bit more than once. Get back when you are done with that. – bistoco Jul 09 '16 at 05:31

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How do I reset a lost administrative password? Once you change the password, Create a new account for yourself and erase the old one. I hope this helped and good luck on exploring Linux!

Community
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Jo Nathan
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