[arch-general] Question about pacman and installing Gnome

[Christian]

Hi all,
I had to do a reinstall of my machine so I did that and for some reason, Gnome doesn't start proprely. I am visually impaired so I can't see the screen until I have logged into Gnome and started Orca, the screen reader for Gnome.
Here is what I do.
pacman -S xorg xf86-video-ati xf86-input-keyboard xf86-input-mouse gnome gnome-extra gnome-system-tools
Then I did:
pacman -S gamin
pacman -S gdm
I have however got a protocol error so I had to restart some of the downloads above, but will pacman check the packages so that they are completely downloaded?
Anyway, I then did:
/etc/rc.d/hal start
/etc/rc.d/gdm start and I did all of this as root.
Then I can read that the screen goes into the graphical environment since BRLTTY and Speakup, the console screen readers tell me that.
I wait for about 30 seconds before I login as my user but nothing happens when I press enter after I have entered my password.
Have I missed something?
This is like I did before.
I have added my user to the video group as well as the others recommended on the beginners guide.
Any thoughts?
Many thanks,
Christian