I did a recovery of the server and reset the root password to a new one because for some reason, the original was not being recognised. It still is refusing to accept the password in ssh for root. After further research, it appears that it could be a corrupt etc/passwd file. Parallels state that running this command: cat /etc/passwd | grep ^root | hexdump -c the end of the file should end with, \n but mine ends with \r \n. This file I checked as a user with /bin/bash privs. Now the problem. I cannot check the passwd file at root. Any ideas? I understand there are 2 etc/passwd locations. 1 for each user allocated on the system and the 2nd is in the etc root area. Thanks 
Possible corrupt passwd file
ssh;centos;security
You've edited the file /etc/passwd with a Windows editor, or with an editor configured to produce Windows files. Don't do that. Windows uses the two-character sequence CR-LF to represent a line break, whereas Linux and other unix systems use just LF and see that CR as an ordinary character that happens to be last on its line. Generally speaking, use a Linux editor to edit files on Linux, or if you use a Windows editor, make sure to save the file in Linux newline format.Your problem is now not that the password is invalid. You are getting successfully authenticated. At the end of the login process, the last thing that login or su or sshd does is to run your shell as recorded in /etc/passwd. It happens that the shell is the last column of /etc/passwd, so now root's shell has been set to /bin/bash where  is a CR character.You need to arrange to either create this file or edit /etc/passwd. You will need root access for either of those. Since you've effectively disabled the root account, you'll need physical access.