Control Panel ‘dies’ after modifying basic settings

After installing WordPress 2.6, everything seemed to be fine. I was able to login successfully, and while I hadn’t yet added any templates or plug-ins, I was able to proceed to the settings section.

There, I changed some basic settings – time zone, name of the blog, whether or not someone has to register to post comments, and the email address to which my notifications should be sent.

I saved those settings, and then was sent back to a plain login as shown in the image at the URL below:

http://www.bitchinmona.com/plain_login.jpg

Then when I login successfully, it doesn’t provide the dashboard config options. It’s almost like an HTML page without the associated stylesheet, as shown in this image:

http://www.bitchinmona.com/lofi_panel.jpg

I don’t know what I could have done to cause this to happen, especially since I only modified settings from within the admin control panel. Any tips to get me back on the right path?