I just dug through my dmesg output. My 2.4.? kernel goes to usb intitialization after the 'Freeing kernel memory' message. Do you have any USB devices attached to the machine?
After usb, there's a message about the ps2 mouse, then it goes into the journal information for my ext3 partitions.
I'd guess a USB device's configuration is somehow mucking things up (unplug it if you can), or it's taking a really long time to either fsck the ext2 (or read the journal if you have a journalized filesystem).
Do a 'linux single'/go into single user mode and fsck the filesystem. That'd be my second thing to try. First, USB devices. Maybe even go into BIOS and disable USB ports just so the OS doesn't get confused.
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JBR