I tried to load the ATI driver and lost the desktop and screen. I rebooted, logged in as root and run xrestore now I cannot even log in.

When I try to load the Media-libs my machine crashes on the third emerge.

Which graphics card do you have?
Search in the log file for errors:Look in /etc/X11/xorg.conf at the bottom and search:Is the first " x " the correct resolution for your display?

Media-libs:

Look at the last 50 lines of the emerge output and search
for the first "error" entry.

I have the following errors in the Xorg.0.log file
(EE) Failed to load module "type1" (module does not exist, 0)
(EE) Failed to load module "freetype" (module does not exist, 0)
(EE) RADEONHD(0): The fglrx kernel module is loaded. This can have obvious
or subtle side effects. See radeonhd(4) for details.
(EE) RADEONHD(0): rhdAtomGetDDCIndex: GPIO_DDC Index 6 exceeds maximum 5

I have an ATI X 1600 128 mb graphics card- I looked in the Xserver info and it says that the screen size is 1280X800 which would mean that the listing in the xorg.conf file is not accurate. In the .conf file it is listed as 1024X768.

Problem solved. The problem was a broken xorg.conf file.