Okay, I followed the directions on my new FC5 install today on installing the ATI drivers. I got to the point where I had to stop x by tying init 3, then the screen went blank and I can NOT get anything to happen at all. I've rebooted numerous times and still nothing. I didn't get to the point of typing init 5 and startx again, because of what happened.

Is there a way of getting a terminal window sometime during bootup? control alt f1 did not work. So far I'm enjoying myself here although it doesn't sound like it. But this is half the fun of linux anyway, right? Right?

You can try booting in a single user mode to recover or use a live-cd to alter your xorg.conf file to get the problem solved..it might be that the single user mode won't work either if you've messed something up big time. Live-cd gets you out of trouble most of the time, so it's handy having one around

Hint: check that your xorg.conf values are sane. If, during the driver install, you altered or let some app alter your xorg conf, make sure the refresh rates, memory amounts etc. are correct. And if xorg.conf is correct, then you better try booting a kernel without the ati driver modules..

I didn't alter my xorg.conf file at all. I lost the whole screen after stopping x and couldn't recover from that. What are the procedures for booting into single user mode?