hangs during boot of 5.2.1R

I'm observing long hangs or even total hanging up of a FreeBSD 5.2.1R
system I recently installed. It is a P4 2.4 GHz, ASUS P4S8X board with a
80 GB WDC WD800JB-00ETA0.

I had a panic with X running and while clicking on a html link in
Mozilla (ports version) the X screen froze (I assume it was a panic in
the background - btw, is there a way to switch to an alpha vty when
the panic occurs?)

After that bad crash I got a background fsck while booting and
the system didn't get after the point 'starting sshd'.

Next tim it hung at
"Local package initialization"

I disabled as much as possible in /etc/rc.conf and /usr/local/etc/rc.d
but still get these long hangs during boot. When I ^C out the system comes to 
login prompt and I see 

sh /etc/rc autoboot
logger -p daemon.notice -t fsck
sh /etc/rc autoboot
sleep 60

Any ideas? 

--
Chris Christoph P. U. Kukulies kuku_at_physik.rwth-aachen.de