--Sys. Specs--
Acer Aspire 7740
17.3 screen
quad core i5, each @ 2.6 GHz
8 GB DDR 3
Single 500 GB Sata HD
--also--
am dual booting With Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit (/dev/sda1 = win 7 bootloader ), my c: drive is /dev/sda2


I recently installed Backtrack 5 R1 (KDE 64bit), it ran off the USB fine, installed on a 17GB partition with 16GB SWAP

-installed- no problems
-restarted (removing USB)
+ it ran decompressed the kernal
+ after a few sec it opened the Backtrack 5 splash screen
+ after 5 or so seconds of the screen it goes back to terminal login
-logged in fine
-used fine, used for a few hours
- everything ran fine

i have turned off, used, restarted into both windows and linux several times

and whhen i went to turn on this morning, selected to boot into linux, and...

+ it ran decompressed the kernal
+ after a few sec it opened the Backtrack 5 splash screen
and it hangs.. forever, let sit for few hours

tried again, same
tried AGAIN, same again

so you can see where this is going

i would like to know what to do without reinstalling completely

I think you would be best served to suggest a re-install from cd/dvd sources. Can't say what the state is of any part. Did you use a tested source? Does memtest pass? Just can't say if it is hardware or software. Worse still is that distro may or may not be stable, virus free or defect free.

I don't think any good can come from a non-technical user trying the tools on backtrack.