Can only log in as a Guest

[mafio1]

I am running Mate 18.3 - changed my normal log in 'charles - custom' to administrator. Charles and Guest come up in the log in screen but only guest works. have tried a live USB stick, but still cannot see my 'Charles' files.
Any help would be very much appreciated as I do not want to loose my files etc.

[WharfRat]

Hello mafio1

Welcome to Linux Mint and the Linux Mint forum

Did you change anything pertaining to permissions in your /home folder

Try mounting the linux partition to /mnt from the live USB and paste back ls -lhd /mnt/home/* so we can have a look.

[mafio1]

Hi WarfRat, thanks for the reply. Sorry for the delay, have been at work all day. tried the suggestion /mnt is empty even with 'show hidden files' , but says no such file or directory. Nothing else was done except to change 'custom' to 'administrator'. I am not sure but I think that the 'home ' directory was encrypted on installation.
if it helps, in the /home /charles directory and from the terminal ecryptfs-mount-private it returns Encrypted directory is not set up properly.

[WharfRat]

Did you actually change the login name - I'm a little unclear with what

changed my normal log in 'charles - custom' to administrator.

means

[mafio1]

The user name remained unchanged, only the custom to Admin was changed. it does look as if can only do a complete new installation.

[WharfRat]

The user name remained unchanged, only the custom to Admin was changed. it does look as if can only do a complete new installation.

I wouldn't think that would cause a problem like this, but then again I'm not clear on all the caveats of an encrypted home.

To recover your files you can try viewtopic.php?t=134231#p720340

I really don't know what else I can assist with here

[alphaeng]

Well! Many thanks to 'Warfrat' . I was unable to make any sense of it, so the only thing to do was to re-install. So now all ok. The lesson to be learnt is to make a backup of important data.
Cheers everyone.