Mint asking for Password although I didn't set one ?

[A3F]

Hello everyone !

First a small situation briefing:
I Downloaded the Linux Mint 10 x86-64 liveDVD ISO and followed the tutorial at pendrivelinux.com and made a multiboot USB stick (4GB) with Mint and PartedMagic (I use parted Magic to write this post) and I made also a 1.7GB casper-rw file.
Mint worked Normally for a few days until yesterday when I tried to start up mint and it asked for a password (I didn't set one as I wasn't asked for one at all during the couple of days i used mint) I tried "mint"/"mint", "mint"/"", "root", "root" and so on and nothing worked so I added init=/bin/bash to the append line and started the bash and wrote passwd and tried to change the root pass but it doesn't work, Here is the output:

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mint / # passwd root
[60.036395] EXT2-FS (loop1): error: ext2_lookup deleted inode referenced: 229528
[60.037309] EXT2-FS (loop1): error: ext2_lookup deleted inode referenced: 229528
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
[60.683295] EXT2-FS (loop1): error: ext2_lookup deleted inode referenced: 229528
[60.687863] EXT2-FS (loop1): error: ext2_lookup deleted inode referenced: 229528
passwd: Authentication token manipulation error
passwd: password unchanged

That was the first try next i started PartedMagic and mounted "filesystem.squashfs" and tried to edit the shadow file which was showing a * as password next to root but it appears to be read only.
I tried to change the password of the user "mint" still no luch and when i tried know to open mint and to input * as password it stops loading at this:

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[2.695924] [drn] initialized i915 ...... etc.

_

It took me a long time to install all things I needed in Mint so is their any way to fix this without having to reinstall ?
and if i have to reinstall could I somehow use my old settings/applications, maybe, by using the old casper-rw file ?

Any help is really appreciated.
Thanks in advance

p.s: after installing docky and setting the GMail helper i was prompted to set a keyring password, does this have something to do with it ?

[A3F]

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