Installed Suse then Xubuntu; now Suse root p/w changed?

Total noob here so bear with me. I have test box that had OpenSuse on it, everything updated and working fine (network recognized etc), I then installed Xubuntu in a seperate partition and Xubuntu took over the MBR and I could not boot Suse. So then I booted into Xubuntu and mounted the Suse drive, copied the Suse related entries from Suse’s menu.lst and pasted them to Xubuntu’s menu.lst. Reboot and there it is, Suse was listed on Grub as an option so I thought wow, I did it! Not so fast, boot into Suse and it doesnt recognize the network, says my root p/w is wrong (not secure I know but the logon and root p/w for Suse are the same) so I cannot tweak any admin settings. Boot back into Xubuntu and it connects fine and recognizes the root p/w I made for Xubuntu. I almost forgot, I did have to change file permissions on the mounted Suse drive to copy from Suse’s menu.lst. So what happend and how can I get Suse back to full speed? I am not near my Linux box currently to post any logs however I can and will later, just let me know where and what to look for.:\