Pressing "I" for interactive start-up does nothing

[mchinn at planktos.com (Michael Chinn, CFO)]

Greetings,

I'm trying to convert a Dell Inspiron 210B laptop into a sandbox using 
Centos4.2.  The install went without incident but rebooting (starting) 
the first time the system hangs at "Initializing storage network" then 
says "disabling IRQ# 11" then goes no further.

I've tried to press "i" and "I" to enter into interactive start-up (so I 
can check the log file) but I can't get interative start-up to turn over.

Ideas?

Thanks,
Michael