OpenSUSE Install :: Suse 11.3 Stuck In Boot-up Because Of Inserted Media?

I have SUSE 11.3 on an Acer Aspire 3620 (laptop). When it boots up, it gets stuck and doesn't complete the process. Can't use safe boot either because I can't get past the login- when I type the password, no keystrokes appear, regardless of the key I strike. Here's how I got into this situation and a little more description of the problem. After my laptop got some nasty bugs that damaged Windows XP so badly that I couldn't use the rescue disk (that I so obediently made per instructions), I bought several linux flavors on Live CD/DVD and decided to go with SUSE. I had been using the Live DVD for about a month and everything worked well so I installed it last weekend (SUSE only -no dual operating system). Everything went well for a couple of days and I even used Yast to get Adobe Flash. Then I plugged in my MP3 Player to recharge it and quirky things started happening.

Once, the computer went in to standby and I couldn't get to the login screen - I started pushing all the keys and something worked. That evening I closed the laptop (so it should have gone to suspend) with the MP3 player attached still, and pulled it out, probably as the computer was going through the motions or shortly thereafter. (My player and usb stick suffer no ill consequences if not ejected properly.) Since then I have not been able to boot up. I powered down several times and tried. It seems to start normally with the green screen and little reptile appearing as the monitoring bar grows. Then it goes black, except the cursor's spinning wheel indicating activity. Then comes back to the green screen, with the bar still increasing and nearly making it to completion. Then the black screen and cursor-- forever. Eventually I can hear that the harddrive is no longer spinning.

Also, when the black screen appears, there is an error message that says that the configuration settings for Gnome Power Manager were not installed properly, which I highly doubt since I had no trouble in the installation, but maybe that is pointing the right direction to the problem. Anyway, now I am back to Live DVD, so that I can surf for the answer to this problem. Least that works! Before installing, when I was using SUSE as a live DVD, it sometimes was a little quirky when I inserted the MP3 Player and USB Stick- sometimes wouldn't recognize them, sometimes would, sometimes wouldn't/couldn't unmount. Firefox also would start crashing after alot of use, but I could reboot and things were fine, so I thought this might just be due to the fact that it was Live and not Installed.

I installed it with the default, KDE. I read another post somewhere with a similar problem in which the author says KDE is very bad with inserted media but I wouldn't know if that's true or not. This is the first time I've used linux, apart from a little bit of experience at work. It really has it's ups and downs, when it was working, it was so exciting, when I got hung up so soon, disappointing. The only thing I can think of to do now is reinstall and tip-toe around being extra careful about the quirks when connecting devices. Not very practical though. Thanks for listening to this long story. Will be trying to get it fixed in the evenings after work EST.

PS IF you can bear to read another line. The live DVD I bought was rather badly scratched and scuffed in my opinion. Although there were no installation errors that I could see, would this have had an unknown immeasurable effect that could account for weird behavior?