Boot apparently fails after login and password

[waltervs]

Having got the system to work more or less the first time we got all our ducks in a row (with some help from the forum), the second time we went to run the machine, a few lines after the login and password, we come to a line that says date and time are not set, using 2102-04-17 14:15 as an approximation correct the date and time using e.g. sudo date -- set="2012-04-17 14:15"
@raspberrypi: $"

But nothing I type in after this appears to make any difference!

is there an instruction I have missed somewhere?

[jojopi]

The message about the time not being set is just a warning; the system did not manage to synchronise with a network time server. You should not experience any problems from having the wrong time, as long as the year at least is correct and the time is not earlier than it was on previous boots. If you want the timestamps on files to be accurate then you should set the time using the command suggested. The command to display the current date and time is simply "date".

Perhaps you are confused by logging in to a command prompt. The command to start a GUI is "startx".

[waltervs]

I am easily confused!

Thank you - that appears to be the crucial piece of information I have missed.