try a different keyboard/mouse, add no-hlt to boot command

Please explain to me how you can read a message Checking for 'hlt' instruction ... OK and conclude, that the check for hlt went wrong? The messages clearly says "OK" at the end, which means two things:

• HLT seems to work ok, at least if you trust the check
• and even if you don't trust the message, the check for HLT is finished now, the system is now doing other things

.

So you better look what other things the kernel is now doing.

I have the same problem, I installed a usb multi-card reader, now my kernel won't boot with it plugged in. My fix was to just not have it plugged in at boot which is kinda inconvenient because it is internal (connect to motherboard pins. The device works fine if i plug it into a running kernel. Concidentally I have a P4 2.8E HT processor, I doubt thats it though. I'd love to here any answers.

I had the same problem. My computer passed all sorts of diagnostics but would hang while checking for the HLT command. In the end it turned out that some capacitors around the CPU had blown. After replacing them, the problem was fixed.

Since the HLT command puts the CPU to sleep, I'm guessing this causes a sudden change in power usage which the power supply can't handle without the decoupling capacitors.