[ale] Controlling Boot

[d2ove4deb at bellsouth.net (Jim Moore)]

Through a series of geriatric misadventures I trashed my installation of 
Etch on my laptop.
It will only start at a black screen terminal login (runlevel 3)?  
<StartX>  gives me a message that the X11 files are screwed up.  When I 
do a shutdown I see that "hald" also didn't start.
What I would like to do is a step by step startup so I can see what's 
loading successfully and what's failing.
Can I hold down Ctrl or Alt and accomplish this or is there some other way.

Jim

As God granted man only limited intelligence, it seems grossly unfair 
that he provided him with unlimited stupidity!