Menu won't load

Hello
I just received my acer inspire one notebook last week and, having had problems with Windows, I feel totally out of my depth with this Linux. As far as I know I have "Fedora 8 werewolf" installed on the computer, or something to that effect. Everything was going fine until a couple of days ago when programs such as firefox began to freeze for no reason. Leaving them to sort themselves out did nothing, as did pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete so I was forced to turn the computer off at the start button. I know this is bad for the computer but I was in a class and had to write my notes quickly. Now suddenly the start menu doesn't appear. The computer turns on, there is the "acer:empowering people" screen and then the blue aspire one screen which follows. However, the split screen "fun/work etc." part is no longer appearing, leaving me with a black screen and an arrow, I have waited for ages but nothing appears. Help me please!
Thank you
Hannah

 

Sounds like file corruption. You'll need to pick up some Linux version that you can install on a flash key and then boot from it and fsck your SSD's first partition. (/dev/sda1)

Cheers.