Installed Ubuntu to an 8GB USB stick. (recent LXF cover disk edition)
Using a new Thinkpad T61.
Pulled HDD out to install on USB stick (to avoid any accidents - work laptop)

Loads up and asks me user name, then password, click okay button, then appears to stall on a blank desktop.

The mouse pointer is there but nothing on desktop or any menu bars.

Any ideas?.... Please!

1. See if you can switch to a text console: [ctl][alt][F1]

2. See what network interfaces are up: ifconfig
You should have an 'lo' interface; otherwise start it: ifconfig lo up loopback

3. Check the permissions on the /tmp directory and invisible subdirectories:
ls -ld /tmp/.*
They should look something like this:
drwxrwxrwt 2 root root ...

Running off a USB stick is not a good idea without a little extra work to make the temporary directories like 'tmp' and 'var' use ramdisk and the root filesystem should also be in ramdisk. 'home' can be a larger partition on the USB stick. Otherwise you'll find that the memory gets worn out pretty quick, especially with the numerous things written to 'var' and 'tmp'.

1. Yes took me into full screen console.
2. Typed: ifconfig lo up loopback but didn't like that.
3. Sorry - beyond my skill level!

Thanks for the help, I'll look for a distro more suited to USB stick running, and one that will do the install work for me!