Hello, What I think is going on is that speakup is still handing speech output to the synth (although it is not there at boot up as it is a software synth you are using) so is waiting for the output to be spoken. What makes me think this is that if using a hardware synth, it will pause while the speech catches up with the screen output. Now for how you can fix this. One thing is that as the computer starts to boot linux, press numpad enter, this mutes speakup until the next key press (rather than until the next screen output like control), now things should continue to boot without pausing. The other (I haven't tested this, but I think it should work) is to set the default synth to None (and issue no speakup_synth command on the boot line (append option in lilo, or at the lilo prompt if you have one)), and in a script before speechd-up is loaded (even in the speechd-up (eg. /etc/init.d/speechd-up) before the command for speechd-up), add the following with quotes "echo sftsyn > /proc/speakup/synth_name". Also you are right, it is harmless, if boot time is not a problem, then you can just leave it, but it may take a long time. From Michael Whapples
