kswapd help

Hi

I was just wondering if anybody could please give me any ideas whats up with me new (not working) linux box.

comp is 3yrs old
pentium II i think
44mb ram
everything else pretty much standard
compaq presario 2282

i have installed Red Hat 7.1 and Mandrake 8.0 at different times, 3 times a piece (got dial-up so cant really d/l the newest versions, have to look out for one on disk somewhere)
everytime i had the same problem on boot
Starting kswapd V1.8
then nothing, everything looks up including the keyboard
with the 3 seperate installations of each os i had 3 different swap partitoin sizes
first 256mb followed by 512mb and 126mb.
still had same problem.
evil_enchilada spent along time trying to help me which i am grateful for but to no prevail
said probably a hardware problem
does anybody know what kind of hardware could cause this to happen? or if it could be due to another problem?

Thank You for your time.