Strange behavior in XF86Config file

[mss]

Strange things have been happening:
I have a dell dimension 2400 with a i810 built-in video card with 8 megs of ram (system ram). I install xfce and gnome on debian attempted to start X. it didn't start and instead my monitor showed a OUT OF RANGE SIGNAL message. i went back to the shell and i ran dpkg-reconfigure -plow xserver-xfree86 command and reinputed all the values. I kept trying and trying and i kept getting the same message. I checked the XF86Config-4 file in the etc directory and notice that none of my changes was written to this file. Is this normal? Anyway, i changed the values within the file and x started but it was very fuzzy. My question is what do i do now? as in how to go through the reconfig for dpkg and have the correct values set? Also how do I get xfce started? because when i type X, x-window starts not gnome or xfce.. which maybe obvious but I don't know how.

Thanks

[antidrugue]

x started but it was very fuzzy. My question is what do i do now? as in how to go through the reconfig for dpkg and have the correct values set?

You can use different tricks to speed things up, like color depth of 16 (instead of the default 24). And of course use the "i810" driver.

Also how do I get xfce started?

startxfce4

should do the trick. Or else install a login manager (GDM).