my gnome desktop has been failing to boot on startup here lately, normally by restarting a few times it will open when i start up. sorta new to linux so my troubleshooting skills arent exactly where they were in windows, if anybody had some help or pointers it would be great

Hmmm, Some more information would help, but for starters:

Did you change anything recently that would cause this?

There are a few things you could try from the terminal. xconf should Automatically configure your x server. xorgconfig will ask you a bunch of questions and to the same thing. Both write your xorg.conf file.

You could also try using a different desktop environment if its just gnome that's giving you problems. "aptitude install kde" and the "xwmconfig" should let you try KDE instead.

Hope that helps a little. Maybe someone else has better ideas.