First off, i'm very new to linux so maybe there's an easy answer that i don't know about...

i installed debian linux last week. i could get a command line prompt just fine, but it took me a few days to get the xwindows configured properly to work with my somewhat older matrox marvel video card. when i got the magic settings right in the dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 program the system immediately tried to run gnome, but hung up on the login screen. no amount of ctl-alt-del or ctl-alt-backspace will get me out of there. the worst part is that now my system is configured to boot automatically into gnome on startup, so i can't get to the command line anymore! i tried to boot from my rescue floppy, but after booting on its kernel, it boots to gnome, too - which promptly locks up. any suggestions/comments? even a command line would be a big improvement at this point! thanks!

Edit /etc/inittab, change the runlevel line from 5 to 3.
Then check out your system/Xfree logs for errors.

Yes everything is on runlevel..you must change it from 5 to 3..

how do i edit that file if i can't get to the command line? my system is automatically booting to gnome, which locks up.

If you have LILO, it is possible to do the following:

LILO: linux 1

From there, you can vi /etc/inittab