Any ideas? Booting AAO loads black screen + mouse pointer

The first restore using the Linpus USB drive created failed with an error "Error, The program cannot continue. Press Ok to exit the program."

The second restore attempt completed, but now the machine boots to a black screen with a mouse pointer. Nothing more.

 

Ok, I'm haing that same last problem - when I bootup I get a black screen and pointer. But I've been using the system a couple of days already

I DID upgrade some stuff from live update, but after that it booted once correctly, and then never again

 

Ok if anyone else is looking to solve the black screen and mouse pointer disaster, it is most likely a corrupt file in the home directory (I had a couple of files with input output errors because the system didnt shut down correctly).

Best way to fix this is to download a sysrescuecd (download from http://sysresccd.org/, and follow instructions on the website on how to transfer to usb media if you dont have a spare cd drive). Boot from that rescue disk, hit enter to start the boot process, hit enter again to select keymap, and then type "startx" to start a graphical session. You should see a Gparted icon, which you can easily use to fix your partition.

I can post more details if someone needs them