I encountered much the same problem, and come to find out, it was the ATI X600 graphics card in the system. I installed a Mach 64 card and disabled the 600 till all was installed. Grabbed the proprietary driver from ATI, installed, and nary a problem since on boot. Even tho the X600 card is listed in the hardware, apparently it is not one of the cards in the list of cards supported from the install CD. If you have another video card, (pci) maybe swap it out and see if that might help. -- Snowman