LinuxQuestions.org - major problems with Mandrake runtime and more

first, i cannot just log into gnome like i could before. what i did was that i tried to tell it to run in X visualization or something (I went to the "configure your computer" and went to system and display properies and switched from display in mandrake to X) because i thought this was something that people did, but whatever it screwed up a lot of things. now i cannot log in to gnome at all. it just starts me out in a console mode, and then i type startgnome and it says i cannot run that from the console, and then i run startx and it gives me KDE and then i log out and it goes back to console mode. i haven't checked what runtime level it is at, but i suspect that it has changed, because i read that is what could affect this. the other thing is that i lot of the things that i had in linux (toolbars and settings) are now gone, but SOME are there. so I'm like, I fucked it up I leave it alone and go do shit in windows, but now my personal toolbars and quick toolbar are gone in windows. obviously a simple click will bring them back, but why is this happening, and how is this happening, and how can i fix it? thanks for your help in advance.

i just wanted to mention also that i went back into KDE and back to "configure your computer" and to change it back to mandrake visualization and it did, but it didn't matter.