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Being a novice, I didn't find the other duplicate questions that helpful i.e how to I read logs eg Xsession, Xauthority without being able to log in in the first place! and I don't know about root access (if that's needed). I've been running 14.04 for over a year now, and regularly running the updates.

My problem is that my password no longer works - it just throws me back to the login screen. The same applies to the Guest login. I have also tried logging in via the text UI (Ctrl+F3) without success.

What I think may have caused the problem - last time I was in, I accidentally deleted all files in the tmp folder. The folder is still there - but the contents are now gone. Could that be the problem, and if so, can you please tell me how to sort it out?

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Thanks for all the help, but eventually I noticed that after logging into tty1 it said "Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04" whereas the GUI was still saying 14.04. I had already guessed the problem was nothing to do with the tmp files, as the problem still existed after creating a new user.

The following post was most useful to me: ubuntu 14.04 login loop problem Question 7, solution 2 suggested running sudo apt-get install which I did, but 3 packages had "unmet dependencies" and it recommended running sudo apt-get -f install - which I also did, and I was finally able to login to the GUI, but with an internal error reported, followed by a message saying "Not all updates can be installed" and suggesting a Partial Upgrade. I did this and was able to save all my documents to a USB stick - big relief!

So I'm now thinking if I continue to get problems with this install, I'll just start from scratch with a clean install.

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