Hmm, if your right about it probably being a hw modem that would be great, thanks. I'm using G-Nome for x-windows.

And yeah, the reason the system is hanging is because it is trying to initialize ppp0 on startup- but I let it go 10-15 min and no timeout. The same happens with the boot disk.

I was thinking maybe if I get it to boot in interactive startup- but how would I get it to do that?