I did some updates over the weekend and now the boot process spends a lot of time somewhere during/after 'setup local hard drives' and before 'probe for new devices' . I'm pretty sure of the updates was 'initscripts-7.55.1-1.i386.rpm' . Still investigating . ps: I realize this is not as interesting as obscene screen savers John Minson Senior J.O.A.T.M.O.N Scientific Research Corporation 3860 Faber Place Drive Suite 100 North Charleston,SC,29405 jminson@xxxxxxxxxx (843) 740-3336 (office)