Red Hat Linux 8.0-help

I have red hatlinux 8.0 installed and during booting
I come to a login screen and when I type in the login name ,the password field comes but I can't type anything as the keyboard becomes inactive and only the enter key works.After pressing the enter key it shows the login as incorrect and I am stuck here. The linux is the only OS on my PC.If I had to forget my login name or even my password for that matter ,then how do I proceed. If I had to reinstall linux then how do I go about doing it.

not showing a password : linux :: showing *** for password : windows

Didn't wanna loose the effect of that last post

Its working fine, linux just doesn't show what your typing for the password, thats why the enter key works, so just type the password and hit enter.

Also make sure your caps lock isn't on when you are typing, as passwords are case sensitive. Let us know if you figure it out, b_heyer was correct in that windows shows ****** when you type passwords and Linux shows nothing, making you think your keyboard isn't working when in fact its perfectly fine.

I remember the old telnet days before I used local echo, to play MUDs and stuff, without local echo telnet never showed what you were typing so I would get scrambled messages that made no sense sometimes