(wow almost a year to the day I ran into the same problem and found this post in my panic)

OK, another case of hung at "Starting audio..."

Brief history of the evening:

- upgraded to latest Hijack (426)
- downloaded Tony's Face controller tool v1.9 (nice!)
- playing with Face, wondered if I could launch the Hijack menu by clicking and holding over the center of the volume knob
- player hung with source-switch banner at top of display "Source: Player" (I could be wrong, but was something like that)
- flashed power and startup sequence hung at "Starting audio"
- reflashed latest Hijack, no change
- reflashed 2.0b13 kernel, no change
- rebooted in vain a few more times
- fought panic
- found this post
- found the "manually clearing the playlist" tip
- fired up Hyperterminal and rebooted the machine
- and it booted fine BEFORE I COULD INTERVENE

...and here we are.

(been years since my last post, I see a few familiar names here still ... the old guard. Tony: sit tight, you're some CIO's wet dream.)