help, i'm a newbie

[NYROSS29 at aol.com]

i'm a newbie and i just installed freebsd 4.8. the basic installation seemed 
to have gone fairly well, i can use the console mode fine enough. the problem 
is when i try to load a window manager, KDE, Afterstep, Windowmaker (the ones 
i've tried thus far) i get a blank screen when i use the startx command. when 
i try just typing afterstep or kcontrol at the command prompt i get a "cannot 
open display" msg. any thoughts or suggestions? send reply to 
casp_semper at yahoo.com
thanks much