Can not log into ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS

Question

I am fairly new to Ubuntu and don't know how to fix this!

So basically this is what happened. I was surfing the internet, when suddenly everything stopped, which is very rare on Ubuntu! I waited for 10 minutes and nothing happened, so I decided to restart the laptop and that's where the problem started. When the computer restarted, the log in was different! It was a black screen with my name in the middle and a white bar at the bottom of the screen with the options "shut down", "restart" and " Hibernate". And it said on the top right corner of the screen

Install Error! your GNOME power manager Isn't configured. please contact the administrator of the computer!

so I tried logging in, and I was bought back to the login screen. (The one I just explained). So I tried installing the program from my Disk. It was all good. It even asked me to import the things from my mucked up account! So I logged into the new account and I found nothing there! And so I restarted the computer and chose the account (thats the mucked up one). And it was the same! In the disk analyser it said I still had the files but I cant get to them!

So what do I do?

Thanks in advance and please tell me the solution because lots of my family pics are on that account and I don't want to lose them!

Ps. I am 15, so please try to keep everything brief!

pps. The mucked account has the following Ubuntu "UBUNTU 10.04.2 LTS"

Again thanks in advance and it would be appreciated if this problem is solved!

Answer 1

Imrose, not sure what you mean by "installed the program from my disk" - can you clarify what exactly you did?

Try this - plug in you 10.04 CD and boot to a desktop from the CD.

Now use Nautilus (File Manager) and find your photos and any thing else you want to keep.

Plug in a USB stick and copy the files to the USB stick.

If you can't find your files then maybe you have overwritten them by the "installed the program from my disk"?

An excellent tool for finding photos etc is PhotoRec. The key-thing to remember for trying to recover files is NOT to install anything else onto the hard-drive.

Use another computer and burn to a CD the Ubuntu Rescue Remix. You can launch PhotoRec from booting using that live CD.

Once you've retrieved your valuable files, then I would concentrate on trying to find a solution for your mucked up installation.

You perhaps could spend a few hours or days searching for a solution - or you can spend 20 minutes doing a reinstall. Your decision will probably depend on how customised your installation was. Let us know.