Problems with Hotplug

[ABrady]

I've only just subscribed to this group today, but I've poked around on
the website trying to find answers and haven't seen anything that helps.
Maybe I just haven't found the right place to look.

I'm having hotplug problems. I've installed Ubuntu several times and
always ended up with the same problems. It doesn't happen every time,
but once it starts it never recovers.

The problem is, during boot, when hotplug services start, the machine
stops booting. Not just a few minutes, as I've seen it do a couple of
times, but completely. As in I've waited over an hour and it still sits
there at the same point.

The first several times I installed Ubuntu it booted up, did some
installing and continued on. I've even managed to reboot a couple of
times after that before. Usually I'd install some more software and
that's when it would happen. So I figured it was something I was
installing after the initial install was complete. I couldn't think of
anything because none of the stuff I added was related to booting or
hotplugging, But that's the only thing that made any sense.

Well, tonight I was going to reinstall and just add a little bit at a
time, reboot and see what happened. I planned on doing that until I
narrowed things down.

But......it hung up on the first reboot this time. I tried another
reboot and it hung again.

There it sits. Well, that's not quite true. I'm booted back into Mepis
to write this. I have them in separate swappable drive drawers.

 I don't know why this is happening, but it's obviously not related to
the software I'm installing since I didn't even get that far this time.

I tried going in as single user before to try fixing things, but it does
the same thing, so no-go.

I have an Athlon XP 1.1GHz. I use 1-1/4GB RAM. There are 2 40GB drives
and an 80GB. Also an internal DVD-reader/CD-writer.

The only thing I can see being a problem is USB. That's a keyboard,
mouse, 2 jump drives, CD-writer, external 80GB drive. There are 2
external USB hubs, an internal hub and 2 USB cards in addition to the
builtin USB ports. The mouse and keyboard are both Logitech, shared
through a KVM switch with a Mac.

I've had a few USB quirks before(drives changing device names, for
example) but never anything that hung up on the hotplugging probes.

Any ideas?