Failure to restart after Software Update.  Newbie help. 

I was using Software Update on my brand new 15.2" 1.5Ghz 1GB/80GB/SD Aluminium Powerbook. 

I only installed the 10 out of 12 items it recommended me (everything except for Airport update and iSight update).  One of the items installed was OS X 10.3.5.  I believe the PB came with 10.3.4. 

After it had downloaded the files, installed, and optimised the HD, it asked me to click to restart so I did. 

It then started to shutdown the computer but got stuck at a screen with only the wallpaper and the mouse pointer (which was movable).  The finder, dock and icons have disappeared. 

It got stucked at this screen for about 1 minute.  So I decided to force restart (ctrl+apple+power button). 

It restarted fine and I ran Software update again and installed Airport update, iSight update and 2 new Security updates that wasn't there before. 

This time it restarted without any probs. 

After this, I ran Repair Permission from the OSX CD and it found no problems. 

And now to my point - "finally" I hear you say . 

#1: I was wondering if there is anything else I should do to check if any damage/corruption has been done. 

#2: Do you think I have done any damage? 

#3: If there is, what can I do to repair it? 

#4: Did I restart too soon?  Should I have waited longer? ( this is for the future). 

#5: Is there anyway of finding out why it got stuck on that screen? 

Sorry for so many questions because I have just bought this laptop solely for a medical imaging analysis project.  Each sequence takes a long time to render so even if I save between every sequence, it would be a pain if the machine should crash.  Therefore I would like to fix any corruption/problem before starting my project. 

#1) You can open a program called "Disk Utility", located somewhere in the Applications folder (can't remember where, sorry).  Select your hard drive and click the First Aid tab.  Click Verify Disk Permissions.  If there's anything wrong, it'll tell you and you can then click Repair Disk Permissions.  You could also get a program for Mac OS X called Cocktail, run all the Cron scripts, etc.  To download Cocktail, just Google it. 

2) Nah, I doubt you did any damage

3) ^^^

4) Maybe you should have waited a bit longer.  If it was your first restart, it probably would have taken longer than 1 minute.  If it wasn't your first restart since you got the PowerBook, it might have actually been OS X's fault.  But I doubt it. 

5) Again, I think you should have just waited a bit longer.  Since it was your first restart ever, it would have probably taken upwards of 2 minutes to load everything.