I have just installed slackware 9 on one an older gateway pc of mine for the "fun" of it. However, I can't seem to get the video to work properly. From the default installation, whenever I run startx the comp just hangs. I can't ctrl+alt+backspace or even switch over to another console. This same thing also happened when I tried to run 'xfree86setup' I got a blue screen asking me if I wanted to continue and when I said yes, I saw some characters scroll up real fast and then the screen goes blank. Its weird though, because the monitor still shows that there is a signal. However, nothing I do lets me back out of it. X -configure also does this.

I thought maybe lilo was the problem because I was using the vesa frame buffer at a higher resolution. So, I made it start just VGA and still had the same problem when I tried a 'startx'.

I then went and did a xf86config and set up X with the generic nVidia driver. Still same problem with 'startx'. I am not sure what to do at this point. Anyone have an idea?

Hmmm, take a look at your /var/log/XFree86.0.log file and see if there are any clues there. It will tell you where to start troubleshooting.
See http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/ for some help.
But usually, it's one or two problems. Did you get the video timings section correct (your horiz. and vert. frequencies). Maybe your setup is looking for a agp card instead of pci card (???). Hopefully the log file will give you the hint. The errors are usually at the bottom of the log file, but look all through it for EE's.
Have fun!