Child Process error - Terminal Window

[Sam17]

Hi,

I recently installed linux on an external hard drive. I'm using the install disk to boot off a dvd then using the linux recsue command to get to linux command line.

#1) xterm: I do a startx which brings up x. In x I can do most things but I cannot start a terminal window from within x windows. Whenever I click on the xterm icon the following error dialog appears: "There was an error creating the child process for this terminal." Are there log files that would help with this error? I found other users had a similar error and had to change permissions and settings on /etc/udev. Is this related to my problem? I looked like the permissions of the files were set to rx for all. Is /etc/udev the problem?

#2) startkde: I don't seem to have startkde available as I get the command not found error.

#3) dbus: Upon initial startup into x, I also get a dialog window that says: "Power Manager - This program cannot start until you start the dbus system service. This is usually started by your operating system by default, and is normally called messagebus. It is strongly recommended you reboot your computer after starting messagebus."

Could someone point me in the right direction to solving these issues? Thanks.