I downloaded kali linux to a bootable usb drive, booted it up on my pc, chose the graphical install and installed it. At some part it told me that it's going to wipe my whole hard drive and for some reason I ignored that. After that I booted up my pc and all I got was a black screen, so I logged on to my roommates laptop and downloaded a tool called boot repair and copied it to the usb drive, of course overwriting the kali linux installation files, and booted it up on my pc. After it was finished I thought that it would just restore my windows 7, but after booting my pc up I found out that it restored the kali linux. Now when I try to log in using kali linux it won't let me in as root, I've tried the password that I used during the installation and "toor" but neither won't work. So how do I log in in this situation?
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Google reset root password kali linux– clhyAug 18, 2015 at 21:55
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1Does this answer your question? Cannot login to Kali Linux– Giacomo1968Jan 7, 2020 at 18:51
1 Answer
Running the Kali system will most probably overwrite some windows files, because it continuously writes some files to the disk (e.g. tmp files), so if you want to keep the windows os on the disk don't use the Kali system again until you fixed this!! Use a live OS instead (like the kali os you had on the USB).
Out of my own experience I would say, that when installing an operating system on top of an other OS, the probability to rescue the overridden one is fairly low! The problem is mostly the partition table being overwritten, because without it you will not be able to reach any file of the system, as that is where it is actually said where all the files are.
Before trying to fiddle with Kali, I would try to find the windows partitions with a live OS (they should show up as a removable media like a USB in the file explorer): if you find them try to repair the boot partition. If you can't reach the files, I would try to part from the windows system, if I were you, as the files of the Windows OS are too many to manually collect and could be located (even split) anywhere on the disk!!!
I had a very similar experience with my first linux install!... Maybe it is some kind of a starting point with linux, to meddle with the OS and the file system... Having burnt the Windows part, I finally stayed with the linux OS and I am happy with it till now :)
