unable to login to linux

[ashbekah]

Sorry for the really stupid post. I recently got a new computer. It has linux mint. Anyway, when I first got it about a week ago, I set it up with only one account- mine- the admin account. So I am off of the computer for a week, and I go to log back in, and it says either wrong user name or wrong password. Eventually I reset my password via http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/339 .... So I know it isn't the password. I have tried everything for the username. I do not have an installation disk or anything to reinstall from. Any ideas how I could figure it out or reset it. If there's something I can go to in GRUB like how I reset the password, and you tell me the directions I could probably do it. Any help would be great! Oh and I do not have the Cd. I bought it as is from the store.

[oldfred]

Moved to OtherOS since Minty.

From liveCD if you look in /home you will see the user.

/home/fred

At grub go to command line. Instead of looking at /boot look at /home and do an ls?

manual boot instructions, but should be similar to look at any partition.
Adjust drive, partition to your install:
ls (hd0,5)/ # Do you see 'vmlinuz' and 'initrd.img' ?
ls (hd0,5)/boot # Do you see the kernel and initrd image files ?
ls (hd0,5)/boot/grub # Do you see lots of *.mod files and grub.cfg ?

[critin]

I do not have an installation disk or anything to reinstall from

If you have another computer or can use a friends, go to linux mint site and download the iso image. That is a copy of your system. If you're using a cd/dvd, burn the image to make it bootable.

If you can boot from an usb flash drive, use unettbootin to make a bootable usb stick. this will give a Live copy of your system and you can reinstall the OS from it if you can't fix it.

This time use a simple user name and password that you cannot forget. I do.
You might want to try ubuntu 12.04 just to try it out. You don't have to stay with mint. lol