If the new account works, it is likely you have something setup wrong in your local account startup files.
Most likely it is your ‘~/.bashrc’ (example: ls -l ~rae/.bashrc)
To see other ‘dot’ files: ls -ld ~/.*
You could use ‘diff’ to see the difference between your .bashrc and the one in your new account.
diff ~/.bashrc ~rae/.bashrc
Or if something is accessing the default terminal, commonly you can use:
control-alt-F1 (or the Control-alt-[F1 - F6] to change to other terminals).
Mark