can't enter password in shell

[[e-mail]]

1. I press CTRL+ALT+F1 to enter the shell ( I need to shutdown x-server to install video driver)
2. Shell prompt for user name. I type in my user name and press ENTER.
3. prompted for password, but before I can touch the keyboard, the system acts as though I have, and cycles through the prompt several times saying the password was incorrect. Each time it cycles as though I have entered something, and I have not.
4. Screen blanks and goes back to the shell prompt asking for user name.

I don't have a problem in terminal (CTRL+ALT+T), nor upon reboot, when entering shell from recovery mode. I also tried different keyboards in the Shell, same thing. this has only happened recently,
I periodically update my video driver, and until today, the process worked without a problem.

Linux <user> 4.15.0-44-lowlatency #47-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Mon Jan 14 12:16:46 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

4.15.0.0-44

all my recent updates were pushed via the update manager.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core 1:18.04.29
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-44.47-lowlatency 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-44-lowlatency x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.5
Architecture: amd64
CrashDB: ubuntu
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Tue Jan 29 10:34:15 2019
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-02-29 (1065 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Studio 15.10 "Wily Werewolf" - Release amd64 (20151021)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubuntu-release-upgrader
Symptom: release-upgrade
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2018-08-22 (160 days ago)
VarLogDistupgradeTermlog: