Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Originally Posted By: Virtual1
99% of the time that is a failing hard drive.

That was my initial take but since then it has exhibited similar problems booting from an external drive,

Any disk access to a failing drive can cause a stall or a complete hang. Disk I/O is a "blocking call" in the kernel, regardless of whether it's the boot volume or any other attached storage. So during startup off a good drive, a failing drive that the OS tries to access to query or to mount can cause problems. I've also seen an optical drive do the same thing, even when no disc was present. (I've also seen multiple computers that could not start off any internal or external drive until I unplugged the failed optical drive)

I'm not saying that's what it is, I'm just saying that's still an option you still need to be considering.

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