then you did it wrong, kapesh? well, i might as well tell you the way to fix that, will you be happy then? pfft.
first, open your config file (c:/seirra/half life/valve/config.cfg)
paste this somewhere near the rest
bind "q" "toggleconsole"
now go ingame again and you press q to open console, if that dosnt work, repeat but with the config in your /esf folder
k?