[SOLVED] Pls help. Mint update broke my laptop?

[YellowJersey]

So I'm running Mint 19.1 MATE on my Lenovo T430 and I have a big problem. I installed the latest updates (see pic below) and then my computer crashed. I rebooted, and now it takes a long time to get to the login screen, but nothing happens when I put in my password. Shortly after that, the screen goes blank, I get a cursor blinking on the top left part of the screen, then the screen turns off, and eventually I get back to the login screen. Rinse and repeat. I get stuck in this loop with no way to log in. Any ideas?

[kelvinhall05]

Can you login with a TTY? Ctrl + alt + f2.

[YellowJersey]

43 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Can you login with a TTY? Ctrl + alt + f2.

Nope. Would it help if I took a video of what's happening?

**edit: Took a video with my phone, but it ended up being 5 minutes long and 300MB, too big to upload here.

[YellowJersey]

UPDATE: I popped the SSD out and stuck it in an external enclosure. However, when I go to open home, it says:

 

"THIS DIRECTORY HAS BEEN UNMOUNTED TO PROTECT YOUR DATA.

From the graphical desktop, click on:
 "Access Your Private Data"

or

From the command line, run:
 ecryptfs-mount-private"

 

If I click on "Access your Private Data" and I get an error. So I try the ecryptfs-mount-private command. The problem is that I don't know the passphrase. When I installed Mint, I clicked the "encrypt home folder," but there was nothing regarding setting up a passphrase, just a login password.

Any ideas? I did some reading and apparently if you know the login password, you can still get in, but I don't know how. I'm really not good with the command line.

 

 

 

[YellowJersey]

More potential progress....

[YellowJersey]

I FREAKIN DID IT! After ten hours of researching online and trying a bazillion different things (and then making things worse and spending more time trying to just undo those mistakes), I finally managed to get my files off that encrypted drive in an unencrypted state. Basically:

1) Pop the SSD back into the original machine

2) Enter into recovery mode

3) Go into root

4) Insert external harddrive to USB port

5) Using the command line  (this was the hard part)

   -log in as super user

   -create mount for external harddrive

   -mount external harddrive

   -transfer the home directory to external harddrive

   -pray to the tech gods that its working

6) Offload files from external harddrive onto another laptop

 Now that I have all my files back, I can simply re-install Mint on that SSD, transfer the files back over to it, and just spend a few minutes configuring Mint the way I like it; shouldn't take more than an hour!

I'm a total command line noob, but I did it! I probably shouldn't tag @GabenJr but what the hey, in my sleep-deprived-have-to-be-at-work-in-less-than-two-hours state it's time to celebrate! The whole time I was thinking, "Man, I wish I knew Anthony. He'd know what to do!"