I'm a bit of a Linux noob, so forgive the basic questions. I've run Ububtu-Mate on a laptop for months and enjoyed it. I recently installed Elementary OS on a different machine and like it, so I installed it to a live USB flash drive to test out on the same laptop and am having troubles.
Live USB boots up and gets to the main screen with the background pine tree image and the dock showing at the bottom of the screen. No panel at the top of the screen, and if you mouse over the dock at the bottom, it flashes and disappears. Then I am stuck. Special+T doesn't bring up a terminal. Alt-Ctrl-1 gets me to a terminal login, but I can't find the live user password anywhere on the elementary site. I'm totally stuck on how to troubleshoot this. Any ideas?