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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!

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When you boot form a LiveUSB, you do not login with your name and password. You have access to your HDD, unless there are restrictions. But if you run

sudo nautilus

in terminal, file manager will start with root rights, and you will be able to do whatever you want.

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  • Thank you, but either you missed a step or it's a little more complicated as it immediately throws up Error while copying The folder xxxx (where xxx is any folder-I've cycled through) cannot be handled because you do not have permission to read. May 24, 2015 at 19:48
  • Please edit your question and describe what are you doing and what kind of errors you get.
    – Pilot6
    May 24, 2015 at 19:50

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