Virtual Consoles in Linux

Hey all, ok this is my question/problem,
I have SuSe Linux 8.1 Professional, i love it to death!! the onlt problem i think iv ever had is, with Virtual Consoles.
The idea of these alone astounds me, i mean what an awesome OS!!!!! ok, i didnt know these existed for a while, i mean **** you can have what 16 desktops already by default? so i was reading an older Linux book (actually its the first Linux book i ever bought) and i seen smoethign i hadnt seen before (i read the manuals but i usually dont go far, i read enough to get me a map in my head then i explore on my own) so anyway, the basic idea is,
you press ALT CTRL and F1 from (well for me anyway) KDE, or gnome or pretty much every GUI, and you are taken to a log in prompt, now this is awesome i think, because also you can log in a million times with a GUI by selecting start new sessino, buit for me when i do this, i log in and everythign goes fine, but, pressing ALT and F7 is sposed to take you back to the GUI, well for me all it does is take me to a black screen with nothing but one blinking cursor at the very top left.....i dont understand, i mean i did it perfectly, at this point i have to hold the power button untill it shuts down and then i have to turn it back on, everything works fine except this. i dont understand why it happens at all, i mean i can log in fnie but getting back is the hard part, i tried lookign this up but no success, this is the only problem i have with Linux right now is that this doesnt seem to work, so what can i do? am i doing something wrong?

basically, I log into my computer with my account i use, then when i wanna like play in text mode i hit either ALT CTRL F1 or ALT CTRL F3 and so on, now after im logged in with just text mode going i play there do whatever i wanted to do and then when i hit ALT F7 i get the black screen of nothingness, iv tried multiple times to figure this outy and i cant so im reaching out to you all to see if anyones had this problem before and what i can do, i mean its not a huge problem but id like to be able to log in and have a GUI going and then switch into text mode for a bit and switch back and forth like your sposed to be able to do.

Also im getting ready to burn Free BSD 4.7 isos onto CD and i might have to play with that:) been a while snice i used BSD, anyway someone please respond soon and in case i forget because of excitement, if you help me THANK YOU IN ADVANCE :)

Hi Gore

To get back to the GUI, type : Ctrl Alt F7

Alt F7 will take you too a black screen.


Cheers

;)

when i do that it takes me to the black screen, i tried everything, it just goes to a black screen when i try switching.

hrmm.. I don't know about SuSe but this works in Debian....
press just alt on it's own.. that should take you back into Xwindows

i did that man, alt on its own and i get a big black screen and have to hold the power button, and then turn the machine back on because nothing responds.

can you type anything when the screen goes black? could you type liek "startx" to get back the gui?

no, i know my post was long up there but i explained it doesnt respond to anything after the screen is black, and i cant do anything but watch a cursor blink untill i hit the power button, and ALT + F7 DOES NOT work, in fact if i switch to run level 3 and use ALT + any F combo it does the black screen.

Take a look at /etc/ttys that should give you enough clues on what tty X is running. On freebsd it's <alt>+F9 (ttyv8). Also on fbsd you can get to the next virt. console with <print screen>.