Fresh setup ubuntu 16.04 lts mate on Raspberry Pi 3 login loop ANYONE?

Hi all

did I ask a bad question? I am still stuck and no one is offering help on this? normally someone has an idea as to things to try, but this time nothing? I looked and every other question has some kind of response. Am I in the dog house for some reason
just cut a new sd and loaded onto a new rpi3 b. All seemed to go well and I added a user fred and stipulated no password prompt on reboot ( it’s on my internal network) before logging out I
sudo apt install htop
and
sudo apt install zram-config

I say this all just in case it’s relevant.

I shut down properly , unplugged the power supply and then plugged it back in.
the pi rebooted BUT I got the user prompt and a request for a password. this shouldn’t have happened BUT I entered the correct password and it just keeps looping back to ask me for my password???

I connected via SSH and the login WORKS !!! what is happening have I gone nuts?? It’s just the initial screen login that fails.