[olpc-help] can only launch one activity

[Bruce MacLennan]

Hi,

My XO (which has been working fine) is now exhibiting the following  
behavior:

After a reboot (or restarting sugar or powerup), I can launch only  
one activity.  It doesn't seem to matter which; I have launched  
Write, Browse, and Terminal, and they seem to work fine.

However, when I try to start a second activity (it doesn't seem to  
matter which), it blinks forever, showing "Starting..."
I get the same behavior if I quit the first activity before trying to  
start the second one.
If I try to start anymore activities, they do the same thing,  
blinking forever.

The Journal seems to be partially working: it sees the contents of  
the internal flash drive (and I can launch an activity, if it's the  
first one).  The Journal sees the SD card, but doesn't show its  
contents (it continues to show the flash drive).  If I put in a USB  
stick, it doesn't see it.  (From Terminal, however, I can see that  
the contents of the SD card and USB stick are intact.  Programs seem  
to run normally under Terminal, if I can get it launched.)

So, the software and/or hardware seems to be broken.  Here are  
possible causes:

(1) Yesterday I upgraded from 653 to 656, but the update seemed to go  
fine and everything seemed to work normally afterward (did lots of  
stuff).

In any case, I have now booted back into the 653 build (via the O  
game key), and it has not fixed the problem.  I have tried restarting  
sugar, rebooting, and power cycling.

(2) Today I might have let the battery run down: the red battery  
light had come on, so I plugged the XO in without trying to check the  
battery status first.  The problems first began after that.  Could  
this have corrupted something?

Is there a hardware test that I can run?

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Bruce