n, and MCP51 high definition audio controller doesn't work. First things first. I had kernel 2.20.1-2933, but they didn't have a 16k stack kernel for that (if someone could point me towards a compiling a 16k stack kernel tutorial) so I forced the installation of the original fedora core 6 kernel 2.18.1-xxxx 16k stack kernel. That's when the text outside of Xserver stopped working, commands like telinit 3 brought up black screens, and didn't respond to ctrl + alt + F3 etc. I think it's because of the forced kernel downgrade. Next, I have beryl installed and working Nvidia drivers. But, beryl manager loads, unfortunately beryl doesn't work as a window manager. When I try to use beryl it just crashes to the fallback manager. Thirdly, I have a MCP51 high definition audio controller, part of the nForce 430 apparently, but it doesn't work in linux, It is recognized and the amixer output says the volume's at zero. I don't know how to change the volume for amixer though. Thanks in advance.

how are you going about getting to runlevel 3?

are you doing it at boot, or after boot?

if you're doing it after boot,
do a telinit 1 first.
then telinit 3 and see what happens.

I find that when moving from 5 to 3 it almost always freezes.

to go down to 1 shuts down everything and thus allows you to move
into runlevel 3.

That didn't work, it wasn't the forced kernel downgrade. It must've been something else like wine or beryl or ndiswrapper or the NVIDIA drivers. I don't mind this too much, I really want to get sound working.