My 14.04 installation has been stable until the latest round of updates. Now on boot I get to the log in password, when I enter it the screen goes blank then random splashes of colour, mouse pointer moves but keyboard is locked out. after approximately thirty seconds the system reboots and goes throught the same loop.
Tried the recovery option using low graphics mode but that froze when I selected that option.
I'm not much more than a beginner, thugh if it requires the command line so be it.
I need to access the ext4 partition to rescue my data before I go further. Used a Live USB to check and all seems to be there but as I'm not logged in with my user name and password it won't let me copy my Home directory data to an external hard drive. Particularly my email archive (thunderbird).
How do I convince this Ubuntu that I'm allowed to access my data?
The system is dual booted with XP hence Ubuntu has been my primary access to the outside world!