Logging in to an encrypted home directory after forgetting my password

Question

I want to try Ubuntu and make it my permanent OS. Hence installed it alongside with Windows 8 on my HP laptop.

I have faced lot of problems to make my system dual boot. I thought it was because lack of knowledge on Unix.

Somedays later, I forgot my ubuntu password as I hardly use my personal laptop. I have tried to change the password in root from recovery mode. It was successful.

There begin my problems. From then when I tried to login, it is looping back to login screen again. By reading some forums I tried to delete .Xauthority file. But, the file itself does not exist. There are only two files Readme.txt and ecrypt-mount---.desktop. None of the resolved solutions worked for my case.

Then, I have logged as guest and using Ctrl+Alt+F1 terminal I was able to login to my account with new password. I have created a new user for testing through recover mode. The new user is created successfully and account is fine.

By following another thread, I have purged and installed lightdm. My situation became worse. Now am not able to see GUI. After boot, system is going to CLI mode with some usb, Bluetooth errors. Using some threads by using startx I can see default blank wallpaper screen for newly created user. Thats it.

I got vexed up with ubuntu and unix. Simple password change messed up everything. Still I want to try and learn it and I think all of this is due to lack of knowledge. Does graphics card upgrade in windows effect ubuntu? no right?

I would be grateful, if anyone could help in either of these.

1. Is it possible to get back to GUI at least to the newly created user.
2. If above step is impossible, how to reinstall ubuntu without effecting my windows.

I am a newbie on linux. So, please consider while answering.
Thanks for your patience.

Answer 1

Since you're seeing a file called ecrypt-mount---.desktop, it appears that you chose to encrypt the files in your home directory. The encryption key is derived from your password, so you'll need to remember your password to recover your files. If there was a backdoor, encryption would be useless.

I recommend that you create a new account and work in that new account. Try to remember your password; if you manage to do that, transfer your old files. How do I recover my data from an encrypted home directory? may help if you remember only part of the password.

If you want to keep your home directory encrypted, write down your password somewhere and keep it in a safe location.

Regarding your problem with lightdm, we can't help with so little information (purged what?). Try to go back to your old working setup, and don't uninstall packages if you don't understand the consequences. You can find a log of package management operations in /var/log/apt/history.log (and history.log.0, etc. for older operations), this should help you retrace your steps.