Ubuntu on Lenovo x61s - Help needed

[Colin Law]

On 4 September 2015 at 03:10, Peter <petergoggin at bigpond.com> wrote:
> I have searched the internet and while other people have had the same
> problem, I do not see how I can apply their solutions to my machine.
> (probably because I do not know enough about Ubuntu. My version is 14.04
>
> If I reinstall Ubuntu using the same passwords as in the original
> installation will my existing home directory and its contents be
> overwritten? I need to get the system going and retain the data. The last
> good backup is May 19th. The latter backups were on an external disk which
> has failed

Follow the advice of others first, but to answer the question, if you
have not specified a separate disc partition for /home, if you
reinstall but select "Something Else" (or similar) when it asks how
you want to install, select the existing install partition as the '/'
but make sure that the checkbox for Format is NOT selected, then the
install will leave the home folder as it is.

However things can always go wrong during an install so make sure you
have backed up the disk as suggested by others first.

Colin