i have some weird problem with pcvt that does not allow my system to 
   reboot.  it goes like this:  i shutdown my machine using either reboot or 
   halt, and after shutting down x-windows, the screen goes back to console, 
   and then when it is supposed to say "syncing disks...done, etc." it 
   instead prints out garbage characters and just hangs.

That doesn't happen on any of my machines.

Have you seen this when shutting down after *not running X at all
since the machine booted*?