I'm sooo close but...
 

I made a stupid mistake. I was at this point in config process of Debian, and I pressed enter:
hxxp://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=135&slide=34

so I guess I did not download any software. It takes me to a dos-like login page

How do I either back up to the old point, or the likely solution...manually install the components on the page from the slideshow... ???

I logged into root, but afraid to mess with anything maybe
# base-config ?

Try base-config.

You can't really break anything, at this stage you can reinstall as a last option :)

--Ian

I got back to where I left off via:

"su" , password , base-config but when I installed everything I get back to the black dos-like screen: debian:~# or whatever. how do I display the desktop view?

X
 

startx

(??)

Or in some cases pick a window manager: "KDE" or "gnome" or "fluxbox" should start a window manager depending on if you have any installed...

If you're looking for a gui login screen, try apt-get install gdm