"HAL" error, usb recovery won't work

Hi, I'm having a serious problem that has me stumped. I know next to nothing about linux, so if you take pity and try to help me out please keep it basic!

I have the Aspire One with linux limpus lite, 512 mb memory/8 gig ssd hd. I don't know anything about what bios version it is, but I bought it back in August from Amazon if that helps.

After running the live update function the computer wouldn't reboot the next morning. After a lot of trouble I finally figured out how to make a USD recovery drive, and successfully reinstalled Linpus. Everything seemed great for two days, but then it failed to reboot again. Very frustrating! I didn't run any live updates on it this time, either. I reinstalled Linpus, then the next day once again it wouldn't start up, and I reinstalled limpus. I did this every day or two for about a week, and then finally it started giving me an error message: "Internal error, failed to initialize HAL". Everything is screwed up, some apps work and others don't, the battery indicator isn't working, USB slots are not recognized, etc.

And now I can't reinstall Limpus at all. I put in the thumb drive before starting it up, F12 and the thumb drive is recognized in the number one boot disk position, hit enter. But instead of going to the reinstall screen like it did before, the computer boots right up into the unusable state I described above.

I'm stuck, any ideas?
Thanks, Andy

 

Temp solution here:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11956

I'd like to get everyone experiencing this problem together in that thread to figure out the root cause and permanent solution.