this is purely for posterity but it took me a while to find this solution online. 10.1 comes wanting to install the stable releases of xorg and the kernel. However on many platforms (especially with intel video) the result is an xorg that functions for a few minutes but then hangs up and prevents you from changing to the tty's. The solution is to install the (currently) ~x86 versions of both xorg(2.6.4 RC1) and the kernel(2.6.31-gentoo-r4). obviously kernel versions may change depending on your set up and when you read this, but it should still give you a place to start looking.