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I turned off my computer by pressing a turn off button for a long time. Then I turned it on. Usually it doesn't ask for password, but this time it did.
So I tried to enter my password and it seemingly worked - I'm seeing a usual black window with some white text on it for a second, but then it returns to asking password again.
It knows the password is right, because if I enter the wrong password it tells me it's wrong immediately.

How should I go about solving this problem? I'm very afraid of losing my data.

Some details that may be relevant:

  • now it's very noisy.
  • Linux username 3.13.0-43-generic #72-Ubuntu SMP Mon Dec 8 19:35:06 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
  • I am running it in guest session.
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    Do you mean the hard drive is very noisy? If so, you need to back up your personal data ASAP because that drive may be about to fail. You can do that by booting from a live Linux CD/DVD/USB. Commented Dec 14, 2014 at 11:52

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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As PM 2Ring already indicated the noise indicates a hardrive problem and this would also explain why the system is no longer able to boot from the drive.

You should IMO no longer try to boot from the drive, but build it into an external USB enclosure. Then boot from Live CD (or USB), and when it is up and running connected the (now external) HD and try and run smartctl to see what the problem might be. If there is indeed a problem with the HDD, buy a new one big enough to copy the data from the old drive and use ddrescue to get a drive image copied (as far as possible), if copying individual files is not possible.

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  • I've done what you adviced, but smartctl only showed old errors and nothing interesting (at least as I could assume at a time). Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 0:04

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