user password recovery fails

Question

I dont know my user password and have tried many suggestions to add user ,change password etc without avail,ls home produces no such file or something ,although I can open Home on the desktop.Can I reinstall over the existing installation without losing data links etc and change the user password then Brian

Answer 1

There's no need to reinstall the system. Just reset your password using the following guide:

I unexpetedly deleted administrator account and the other accounts are asking root password

(I mean Fernhill Linux Project's answer.)

You don't need to add a new user, but you should run passwd command to set a new password.