Newbie Login Password brick wall.

Hi Zorin people,
I would like to login to my ZorinOS6 32bit download. I'm a newbie who is trying to run before I can walk.
I bought a seagate 320Gb drive, striped it out of it's case and swaped it into my Vaio VGN-BX296XP with 2Gb RAM (max). I refuse to retire the old girl.
My graphics card is an ATI Mobility Radeon with hyper memory, supporting 256mb. No issues here have cropped up.
I have downloaded iso's of GParted, Zorin, a few different versions of mint, and a few other distros and stuff and burned them successfully. (I'm making that sound simple. I'd have to sit down with ye over a few slow pints in order to explain how long it took, and what trials and adventures I had to go through to do this).
I have set up my drive as follows in GParted:

Partition File system Label size(Gb) notes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda1 ntfs C: 39.35 Not in use
/dev/sda2 extended 258.74
/dev/sda5 ext3 zorin 40.00 boot
/dev/sda6 ext3 mint 40.00
/dev/sda7 ext3 other1 40.00
/dev/sda8 ext3 other2 40.00
/dev/sda9 ext3 /home 94.74
/dev/sda10 linux-swap swap 4.00
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have no file system yet.
I have no users set up yet, although I did try.
I have not set up grub correctly yet. (Once I have some sort of file system on the drive I'll play with grub properly).
When I boot Zorin from the DVD it takes about 15 mins to load (which is fine), but it brings me to the login prompt and I am stuck. The same if I try the direct install.
I may have mistyped a password or something, I'm 90% sure that I would not have used CAPS in any of my attempts. (That 10% doubt is niggling me though).
I have definitely shutdown installs half way through.
Are we cringing yet?
I have tried every version of every password that I may have set up, but I'm still locked out.
I really thought that I would manage this setup off my own bat, but alas, I'll put my hands up and admit that I am thick and need a fivers' worth of help.
One other bogie, My internet connection is through a HAWUAI USB sim modem. Humm..
-aside: I had do download the big isos' in an internet cafe as the downloads would reach 98/99% and would stop otherwise.
I intend to install Zorin OS6 as my primary OS and once I have that in place I will mess around with other installs.

I do not expect any one to one realtime help, and I am in no real panic but any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Wolfman and swarfendor437, your contributions have been informative and clear. My hat is off to both of you. Many thanks.
Kind Regards,
ViceGrips.

Hi,

take a look at this guide about partitioning, it might give you some ideas:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2601

create separate root and home partitions if you are installing more than one version of Linux, you only need one swap.

Use Ext4 as Swarf already pointed out for root and home. Swap will auto-format itself.

Did you burn the DVD at the slowest possible speed, if you didn't, you will get read/write errors such as you describe with slow booting speed etc. Reburn the disk at the slowest speed possible!.

Regards Wolfman

Thanks swarfendor437. I'll re-format to ext4.
I've kept the 39Gb (it's completely empty) in case I need to install windows at a later stage. My hope is that this won't need to happen, but If I need to do it in a hurry, I'll have my grub backed up and I'll have that space ready to avoid any complications.
A car diagnostic program that I want to use requires a windows OS, the manufacturers say. My long term plan is to learn how to prove them wrong.

Back to the job at hand, on Wolfman's instruction, another trip to the café is on the agenda. I'll burn a clean copy at the slowest speed and try again.
My sincere thanks to both of you, I'll let you know how I get on. It might take me a few days.
Regards, ViceGrips.

Good luck

Wolfman, you were on the ball. Thanks a million. Slowest burn speed dvd boots up a lot quicker. I'll time it the next go. No password login screen. All go. 3g modem working now. Not complete success yet but I'm nearly there. One install attempt seemed to go perfectly but when I tried to reboot, nothing. I ran out of time.
Ok, ok, ok swarfendor437, hardcore it is. No ntfs partition. Swap at the very end and all the rest ext4. More reading about dividing up the other partitions for 4 operating systems.
I'll let you know.
Thank you both again.
ViceGrips.

I want to setup 3 or 4 users with different rights. I had been messing around with password setting from a magazine without really knowing what I was doing... not exiting root access and shutting down for example. For now I just want to install successfully to my new hard drive and see what I can do in zorin outside the boot DVD. I have not had a successful install yet. It keeps freezing so far. I'm gonna keep trying.
regards,
ViceGrips.

Hi,

if you didn't manage to install, what boot methods did you try, I recently had a problem with Zorin Core 6.1 and had to resort to direct install because neither normal nor safe mode worked. Have you also tried a USB install?. (This may also be due to my 1st DVD drive; which I changed to my 2nd!)

For multi user accounts, I suggest you install the package:

sudo apt-get install gnome-system-tools

and look for Users and Groups in the main menu.

Let us know if this helps.

Regards Wolfman