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Disclaimer: I am BRAND new to Ubuntu.

A quick background: my laptop hard drive crashed, I bought a new one, didn't want to pay for windows for an old laptop, installed ubuntu, it worked great for a week.

One day I booted up and logged in and got a black screen (no cursor showing as many have). I am able to log into guest just fine. Did my research --appears to be an issue with Nvidia drivers. There are many answers on how to deal with that (though I do not understand them yet).

Finally learned how to open the console/GUI/Ctrl+Alt+F1 (not sure technical name). I am prompted to enter a username and password. I can enter a username, but when I hit enter after entering my username, I am completely unable to enter a password. It will not let me enter a single character into the password, and after a few seconds it says the attempt fails, and loops right back to entering a username.

TL:DR I cannot enter any code to fix the NVidia drivers because I cannot get past my username and password. I know my username and password, but I am not able to enter my password.

I am fine with reinstalling the whole operating system, this computer is completely clean without any personal files, but I am unable to make any changes from the guest login because of lack of administrative permissions.

I am sorry if this is a duplicate, I have searched for a couple weeks and not found a situation exactly like mine, many similar though.

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  • I now understand the security measure in place and that my password is in fact being registered. I still am unable to login due to a "login incorrect". Clearly that means my username or password are incorrect. I am confident in my password, and I assume my username is the name located on the original login screen after boot up --the one above the "guest" account?
    – Helga
    Dec 2, 2015 at 4:50
  • No, the name above the guest account is not necessarily the username, but could be your full name as you entered it while installing. For example, if the name shown is Helga Hufflepuff, the username could be helga or helgahufflepuff or helgah, etc.
    – muru
    Dec 2, 2015 at 4:54
  • I see. In the top left corner of the login screen it says "Helga" as if that were my computer name, and upon CtrlaltF1'ing it says "Helga login:" If I then enter Helga as my username followed by my password it again does not take. So then, is there a way to find out what I may have used as my name whilst installing?
    – Helga
    Dec 2, 2015 at 5:00
  • That is the hostname, the name assigned to your computer, but not your username. On a guess, try helga.
    – muru
    Dec 2, 2015 at 5:03

1 Answer 1

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The password is being typed. Just type your password and press enter.

The terminal hides the password for security reasons. This behaviour can be confusing at first but you will get used to it.

About your other problem: You said Guest logs in just fine but your account doesn't. I encountered the same problem and the fix is this:

Delete the .Xauthority file. Run
sudo rm /home/yourusername/.Xauthority
and reboot. Hopefully this will solve the problem. Comment if it does.

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