When installing and running any linux (diagnosed on installation of RH8/9 and installation and running of Debian Woody) on an HP Pavillion Ze4400, booting may halt at a specific part. During RH installation it is typically around the Media Check part while Debian halts on the Language Selection. My dear friend helped me a lot and I found that you need to bang your one hand on the keyboard constantly while using the other hand to pick your nose (scratching your butt is also allowed as long as you don't pick your nose afterwards).
Apparently the IDE bus is causing this and banging the keyboard seems to stop it from freezing. It is reported that passing a specific Bus ID at lilo bootup (linux ide-bus=66) could fix this issue but I've had no luck with that. The problem was solved with a default RH9 kernel. With Debian, it was not. You will probably have to tweak PIO settings. I only noticed this problem on the ZE4400 type but it also might occur on other types.
