Zero-fill

I'm a total newbie to linux and today I decided to install linux onto my laptop. Overall the installation went ok except for the absence of the proper graphics driver and no nic drivers. Within 20mins I have KDE up and running on it. Working on my desk I plugged in a USB optical mouse which worked fine. I spent an hour or so customising the KDE desktop then I decided to go sit in a comfy chair in another part of the house to get to know the unix terminal so I unplugged the usb mouse and intended to use the track pad. This caused the system to hang so I pressed the power button to restart it. Now it only boots up the unix terminal and I cant get back into the nice GUI I spent hours seting up. My question(s): 1. Does anyone know why the GUI wont boot any more? 2. Is there a command which can get you back into the GUI from the terminal. I've tried exit and logout which dont work 3.Where can I locate the hardware drivers for my laptop. The manufacturer only has the windows driver as far as I can see My Laptop: IBM Thinkpad R40, Intel Celeron 1.8GHz, 512MB DDR RAM, ATI Mobility, Wireless LAN