Lone3wolf: unplug all removable hardware, all drives but your Boot Drive (C:\), and one stick of RAM (if multiple sticks are present), and try booting that.
If that works, add one piece of removed hardware at a time. and reboot. If it stalls again, you got the bad hardware, being the last piece you installed.
If it stalls with just the basic setup, it's either that drive, that RAM, or your CPU/MoBo. Swap the RAM stick (if possible) and try again. See if you can swap out the drive with something else - assuming you've got spare drives, and can throw an OS on it without losing anything important.
You could also look for Eurosoft's PC Check 6 and newer (it's not free) and boot to that CD to test your system hardware. RAM tests will take a loooong time, but you could skip that and run the system stress test for 5 minutes as a .... shortcut.
wow that sounds like a chore. i figured this had to be hardware-related. i'm just going to check to see if something got loose before I go through that whole process. also, i may die from dust suffocation.