How to restore Gnome gui - Total system crash Ubuntu 9.10

Installed Ubuntu 9.10 on an old machine last weekend. Installed some extra software (i.e. Opera) and tried to make the Chinese IME to work. The chinese ime still does not work as it should but basically the system ran fine for 5 days. The last 2 days I hibernated the system between sessions as I was working on a project involving many different programs. That too went well until last night. I wanted to switch off the computer but that option just would not work. I could still hibernate though and this morning the system came back to life. Still I need to reboot. In desperation I opened a terminal window and gave the command $ sudo shutdown -h now.

The system did shut down but now it refuses to boot back to the original GUI. All I get when I reboot is the Ibus console and a terminal window. No menus, no other parts of the GUI. I can not get back into the normal GUI environment. I do not know enough about the system to fix it through the terminal window. But each time I reboot the whole thing repeats itself. There must be a way to reset the system so the normal GUI boots. It is just that I have no idea where to begin.

As my other computer is being fixed this is the only machine left for me to do my work. Any help would be very much apprieciated. I am currently running Ubuntu 9.10 from the install disk.