OS X Recovery from Time Machine

I encountered my first serious error on my Mac this weekend.  The problems started on Friday night when I realized that OpenOffice 2.4 would not open for me.  When I clicked on the icon, X11 would launch, as it normally does, but OpenOffice froze at the spinning wheel of death.  The only way I could quit would be to use the Force Quit option.  I troubleshot this problem briefly, but decided into install OpenOffice Beta 3 RC2 (which I had been meaning to do anyway).

OpenOffice 2.4 was deleted and Beta 3 downloaded and installed.  Everything worked perfectly, I was able to start OpenOffice 3 and edit documents without any issues.  I must add that OS X Updates downloaded & installed an Java update on Friday as well, but I'm not sure if that had anything to do with the problem or not.  Anyway, the machine worked fine through Saturday (although I did not use OpenOffice at all).

Sunday morning rolls around.  I start up the Mini, and try to logon.  Nothing happens.  And by that, I mean NOTHING.  OS X boots to the login screen, I click my user, enter password, hit return, and the logon screen disappears.  I let the machine sit for at least 10 minutes and still nothing.  I unplug all USB devices save the mouse & keyboard.  I try again (multiple times), but have the same result each time. 

Fortunately, I am able to logon using my wife's account.  OS X will boot into her account, but I can't use any of the menu options (File, Edit, ...) in any application.

At this point, I'm stuck.  I know the trouble shooting procedures if something similiar would happen in Windows, but not so much in OS X (this type of thing is never supposed to happen in OS X, right?).  I manage to uninstall OpenOffice Beta 3 using my wife's account, but still no luck.

I eventually find info about restoring from Time Machine.  The following video was especially helpful:

I used Time Machine to restore the Mac back to Thursday's image.  As of last night, everything seems to be working great and absolutely no data was lost.  I was still experiencing OpenOffice 2.4's inability to start, so I again tried the OpenOffice 3.0 Beta install, after which I rebooted/logged in several times without issue.

Total time it took to recover:  Probably about 4 hours.  Had I known about the Time Machine recovery option, it probably would have only taken 2.5 hours.

I'm still not 100% convinced that it was OpenOffice that caused the problem, but it was the only program that had been installed (other than the Java update) in the week prior to the problem.