Destroyed x.org

[achoens at frontiernet.net]

Ok,  here's a question for all you gurus out there.  I have a problem,
and I know how to fix it, but I can't get to a point where I can fix
it.  I got frustrated, and decided to beg for help.

I used yum to update a FC3 T2 system to a T3 system.  All went well
enough I thought.  I noticed that I had installed a new kernel, so I
decided to reboot to see how it worked.  Well, the upgrade has trashed
X.  I thought, no problem, I'll just disable rhgb, and boot, X will go
a little crazy, but I'll go to tty2 and roll back X, and then ask here
why the new X messed me up.

So, I boot to GRUB and remove rhgb from the kernel arguments.  But, rhgb
is still used, and everytime it screws up.  By the time the system is
booted, X is respanwing like crazy and you can't log in even at
non-graphical screen.  I go to tty2 and type in root and it blinks and
it asks me for my login again.  No opportunity to enter my password.

So, from the grub screen how can I disable rhgb and boot to 3 instead of
5?  I've thought about using the rescue cd to edit my grub.conf file,
but I don't understand why editing the kernel args at boot doesn't
work.

I would appreciate any ideas on how I can eliminate X from my boot
sequence long enough to roll-back X.

BTW:  does anyone have any idea why X.org 6.8.1-12 trashed my
installation?

Thanks
andy