I tried to upgrade from 13.04 to 13.10 last night and something went wrong. At first I was able to boot to the log-in screen, but it was showing a blank screen with a cursor.
I used boot-repair to attempt to fix the issue and now it only shows a blank screen. I want to format and install 14.04, but I cannot access my files through the "Try Ubuntu" option as suggested. When I try to copy the files over to another HDD or external HDD I get a permission denied message.
I've just installed Ext2 on my Windows 8 HDD, but it doesn't allow me to view the files without formatting first.