I had the similar problem related to boot-time freezing related to several reasons. I had to enable the legacy USB support to fix that issue (provided that your BIOS allows that setting).
For further setup hint, look at your MoBo and pull out every PCI/e etc device to see if the system boots normally (Live-CD) . Introduce the cards (and USB driven devices such as CF cards) one by one to see which one is the problem.
I have Jetway J7F4K1G2E and BIOSTAR GF8200 M2+ (with AMD Athlon X2 -45W & Intel dual NIC pci-e) for my firewall/proxy. Jetway MoBo did not work with the PCI network cards. All sorts of freezing came down to PCI card issue. Still do not know why (although I have a hunch that it could be related to filmsy PCI extender or PCI-memory-overlap). I used a USB ethernet adapter to make it work. Go figure! For the Biostar MoBo I had legacy USB support issue as well. Also EHCI handout disabling needed.
Good luck!