Same problem here. It's not the disk or vol-ramp-up though, but rather some error messages going out the serial link that seem to result in the power-on stutter. Messages like this one:

E !! mp3_decoder.cpp 1052: Failed to seek to offset 2760289, error=0xc0044000

Speaking of which.. does anyone else see this kind of garble on boot\-up:

Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k initVqz>hTQ#$
@F@N@d
D empeg-car 2.00-beta3 2001/10/17.