hanging on bootup: scanning for harddisk partitions

[mln]

With Knoppix 3.2 there where no problems. The harddisk was fully accessable.
The contents of /proc/partitions was:

major minor  #blocks  name

   3     0   14749056 hda
   3     1    6160896 hda1
   3     2          1 hda2
   3     5    5630751 hda5
   3     6    2955928 hda6
~

~
With later versions of Knoppix I have problems with accessing my harddisk
with 3.8 and 3.9 knoppix hang by booting on: "scanning for Harddisk partitions and creating /etc/fstab..."

Hopefully there is an option by booting

Hans