immediately my pointer gets very lethargic and not moving too well. Looks like the cpu has been maxed out!
Exactly the same problem I have with mine. Had slightly more success booting with a clean 3.1 install with nothing but MUI and Poseidon, but what fun is that?

Occasionally mice and keyboards work, I'd take the advice of someone else and not try to use flash drives, otherwise you might wind up with corrupted files.