A friend of mine sent me his empeg so I could troubleshoot it. It has two drives, latest hijack and 2.0 final.
The boot log looks pretty horrendous:

see attachment 2 posts down

It ljust loops. NOt looking good. Can anyone decipher that? Sidenote, when he gave it to me, apparently he'd already tried to reseat the IDE cables, and the one on the second drive was plugged in upside down....