errow messages when i try to log in

Please press Ctrl+Alt+F1 at the login prompt, a terminal should open. Login with your username / password and
enter "id" (without quotation marks) hit Enter and post the output here.
This will tell us what you actually did to your groups.

uid=1000(potter) gid=1000(potter) groups=4(adm),20(dialout),21(fax),24(cdrom),26(tape),29(audio),30(dip),44(video),46(plugdev),104(fuse),106(lpadmin),112(netdev)121(admin),122(sambashare),1000(potter)

I just realized that "/root/.ICEauthority" looks odd.
Please post the output of "finger $(whoami)" also.
The first two lines are the most importent, just in case you have to type it.

Login: potter Name: Christopher
Directory: /root Shell: /bin/bash
On since Mon Oct 12 12:10 (CDT) on tty1 (messages off)
No mail.
No Plan.

ya, i'm typing everything =(

Ok, your home directory is set to a wrong destination.
Type "sudo usermod -d /home/potter potter" and enter your password to fix it.
Then hit Alt+F7 to return to the login and give it a try.

I am recieving the following messages after i log in...

1. Could not update ICEauthority file /root/.ICEauthority

2. There is a problem with configuration server.
      (/usr/lib/libgconf2-4/gconf-sanity-check-2 exited with status 256)

3. Nautilus could not creat the following required folders: /home/potter/Desktop, /home/potter/.nautilus
      Before running Nautilus, please create these folders, or set permissions such that Nautilus can create them.

4. There was an error starting up the screensaver:
      Failed to change to directory '/home/potter' (Permission denied)
      Screensaver funtionality will not work in this session.

What does "ls -l /home" (both l are Ls) return?

And...Did the home directory from "finger $(whoami)" change?

total 8
drw-r--r-- 53 potter potter 4069 2009-10-12 03:12 potter
drwxr-xr-x 2 1001 admin 4069 2009-06-30 16:19 user

total 8
drw-r--r-- 53 potter potter 4069 2009-10-12 03:12 potter
drwxr-xr-x 2 1001 admin 4069 2009-06-30 16:19 user

finger $(whoami)
change to
Login: potter Name: Christopher Potter
Directory: /home/potter Shell: /bin/bash

The permission on your home are not OK.
Try "chmod 755 /home/potter"!
If this still does not help check if "echo $HOME" returns "/home/potter"!

"echo $HOME" only returned "/"

That may happen if you are still logged in.
Hit Ctrl+D at the terminal and login again.
If everything is fine "pwd" should return "/home/potter" afterwards.

Thank you for you help Mr. Krüger
=D!!!!!

I had this exacte problem except that I never got the

"User's $HOME/.dmrc file is being ignored. This prevents the default session and language from being saved. File should be owned by user and have 644 permissions. User's $HOME directory must be owned by user and not writable by other users"

error. Instead I just got the last 3 errors (ICEauthority, sanityCheck, and Nautilus). I did everything you said to do here, and that fixed those errors, but now something is very messed up:

Now I can run Ubuntu normally, but cannot open firefox or the file browser (and I'm sure many other things). If I try to run firefox from command line it says that "home/exuberance" does not exist. Wat? I'm in it right now! I go into users and groups and notice that root has directory /root but my account has directory home/exuberance (note the lack of / before home). I look at it's properties, don't change anything, and click OK and it says that the currect setting "home/exuberance" is in complete and should look like "/home/username". So I change it from "home/exuberance" to "/home/exuberance" and it closes. I now try to run firefox from command line and now it just does nothing. No errors this time, but it still doesn't run. I also notice that now in my main directiory there is a new home directory. It made a new home/exuberance directory in my /home/exuberance directory. <_< I restart, and go back into users and groups and notice that "/home/exuberance" has changed back to "home/exuberance", but if I go into properties it still says it's invalid and should have a / infront of it, but all that does is make another home directory inside my direction which is inside the REAL home directory.

Also, whenever I start in recovery mode now and log into exuberance, it says that it can't find "/home/exuberance" (it's right there!) and is instead using / as the main directory <_<. I also can't view my documents now since it's hiding them for privacy. I also can't use startx to get my GUI back anymore. So basically, now it's just screwed up more than before and what seems to be wrong is exactely the thing I just fixed.

This problem arose for me after I (1) opted to encrypt my home folder during install, and then (2) attempted to change the password of the default user account. The password change failed: I still logged in successfully using the old password, however. The problem finally appeared after (3) installing various new software packages.

When I log in through the console, I type ls and all I see is a file titled Access-Your-Encrypted.Data.desktop, or some such. I need the passphrase generated during install to unlock the home folder, but of course I had not gotten around to writing it down outside my home folder, so I cannot access it.