The Vert and Horiz are not set automatically by xorg, you specify them according to your monitor, and yes, it could very much be the reason of why your X is not working, try to repeat the process, not re-emerging xorg and nothing like that , just try to reconfigure X again, now making sure that in the testing part you include your vert and horiz values.

I hope it work

Have a good night

Hello again: while re-readin your post, I did cuz something sound kinda odd to me, and it is:

I just get a black screen with an X and then it changes to a pointer. It moves when I move my mouse. --> This is was you're supposed to get while you're running # Xorg -config xorg.conf.new with or without the Vertical and Horizontal values, you do this to make sure you have a working xorg.conf file, once you are satisfied with the results copy it over to /etc/X11, make sure though, that when u copy the file to /etc/X11 it includes the Vertical and Horizontal values.

I hope you get it to work, good night

blood_omen, you're great! It's working now. Here's what I did:

I first unmerged Xorg and reemerged it. It didn't seem to change anything. I then unmerged Xorg again, deleted all config files in /etc/X11 and /usr/X11R6 (I think that's the dir), then emerged Xfree. I then use /usr/sbin/ddcprobe to get my video card info and very carefully setup my Xfree my xfree config file - /etc/X11/XF86Config - using /usr/X11R6/bin/xf86config Then, startx, and boom, gnome loaded!

I don't know what was up with Xorg. Maybe I did something wrong. Xfree worked right away after I setup /etc/X11/XF86Config

Thanks so much for your help. I wouldn't have known the process of how to setup the config files without your help. (Luckily Xorg and Xfree are similar enough.) Thanks again!

I'm very glad to hear that you got it working

As far as I know Xorg and XFree are very much the same, there are supposed to be some difference, but I don't know which one are, to me they both look the same

Enjoy our new X