could open office clashing totally obliterate my system???
 

I have an acer aspire one with Linpus Lite. Copied a document into OO yesterday and got a message OO had crashed. OO window wouldn't close etc. Emails and internet still worked ok. When closing down, emails & internet closed ok. Tried Ctrl, Alt Del to close the crashed OO file - didn't work. Eventually turned machine off at main switch. Today when turning machine on, goes past the screen advertising Acer Aspire one, but then nothing else happens, no icons. Black screen with a cross as a cursor. Cross is a diagonal cross, thicker than an ordinary x. Nothing like I have ever seen before.

I can't do a thing from this point? Any ideas?

Hi, it seems the windowmanager did not start properly. Unfortunately Linpus is the most worse distribution ever and noone really knows anything about this system (besides that it is base on an outdated version of Fedora).

How about your knowledge with Linux?
An attempt to enter the console would be to press the <CTRL><ALT><BACKSPACE> keys simultanously.

I'd recommend to install another (fullfeatured) Linuxdistribution instead of Linpus. Look here: http://www.linuxmint.com/ or http://www.ubuntu.com/netbook

Since your netbook doesn't have a CD/DVD drive, you'll have to create a bootable USB-drive, this is easily done with the "unetbootin" programm which is available for Windows http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Markus

If you have an external DVD/CD drive, you may be able to plug that in to your netbook and boot from it.

I can do that with my Dell.

I just have to hit the correct key during the BIOS check when the computer displays the "Press this to enter setup/Press that to choose boot device" prompt.