[CentOS] Very early PANIC during boot

I'm in the process of updating all my CentOS systems from 4.4 to  
4.5.  One of the systems is spewing out the following error during  
the reboot:

   INIT: version 2.85 booting
   INIT: PANIC: segmentation violation at 0x420! sleeping for 30 seconds

This happens so early in the boot I have no idea what I can do to  
debug this.  I suspect it is a hardware problem and not something  
caused by the "yum update", but I thought I'd mention it here in case  
anyone else has any ideas.

Update: I originally sent this message out yesterday, but my email  
client used the wrong account so it didn't get posted to the list.   
I've since re-imaged this system (thank you Red Hat for Kickstart),  
but I am still curious what could have possibly caused this and any  
debugging techniques that can be used in this situation.

On a vaguely related note, I also have pondered the following in the  
past; if you observe a system booting, you'll see all the "[OK]" and  
"[FAILED]" messages.  Is there a log somewhere where you can check  
later on which services were started and which passed or failed?

Thanks,
Alfred