vcenter appliance root login denied

Hi,

facing a problem for the past 4 months.

i'm unable to login to the vcenter appliance root account.

via ssh or local console. both throw an access denied error.

i've tried to see if the password has expired per this article: http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2013/09/how-to-recover-vcsa-55-from-expired.html

it was not.

while i was in there i decided to do try this: http://www.virtualpotholes.com/post/124746380849/how-to-reset-the-root-password-for-vcsa-60

confirmed that multiple articles said the same thing: http://www.settlersoman.com/how-to-reset-root-password-on-vcenter-appliance-vcsa-6-x/

saved the shadow file, unmounted the drive and rebooted.

i'm still unable to logon via ssh or local shell.

i'm stumped.