Telling kernel libata.force=noncq during boot-time from liveUSB had no effect for me - still got hangups on the same place. It is interesting, that this happens only after X and gdm is starting. Don't know why really. Now I got this: booting into single-user mode gave an interesting result:after getting onto root shell, in about a minute I got a message about exception Emask, DRQ etc. But after it - another thing, that got my interest - a message, telling that "Starting init crypto disks... [OK]" So, my guess that it's really there - in crypto disks. 2009/12/7 theluketaylor