From your post it sounded like you were trying to enter init:0, but init:0 is shutdown in Linux. If you enter this level it will ALWAYS shutdown, so you can do this all day but it will not boot. Also don't go into init:6 either. That's a reboot level....
Why not go into init:1 or init:3. It'll at least get you to a command prompt and you can dig around in it. You don't need a gui to fix things.....