I've been playing with SuSE 9.0 for about 5 months with no problems. This evening it began freezing at boot level 5@

Starting Hotplugging Services [ieee1394 net pci usb_

then it freezes right there!! Repeatedly!!

Is there a boot option or cheat code I can use to overcome this??

Thanks!

the obviously answer would be... do you NEED hotplug services? if not, disable it.
otherwise.. you MUST have done SOMETHING very recently prior to this happening. what program/hardware did you update/remove/install? what crucial/system/hotplug setting did you change?
this would be the first step

I'm happy that someone sees an obvious solution!! However, it would only be obvious to me if I had previous experience with the problem, which I do not. Since I do on occasion hotplug usb devices I suppose I am in need of hotplug services. This problem began today and was unprovoked. I did power-down the machine so that I could use the monitor and battery back-up on another machine...but that's all I have done...a proper shut-down and reboot should be inconsequential in this regard. If anything changed, it was not of my doing. Perhaps it had a "Windows" moment?

You can specify from the boot loader which run level you want to boot to. I think it's just a matter of typing the number. Hotplug is not just used for usb, but for most devices on the system (though static configuration options do exist). Runlevel 5 is full graphical, 3 is text only, 2 is text only without full networking. I expect hotplug to start on each of these runlevels (note, these are SuSE runlevels; it varies in other distros). Hotplug might not start in runlevel 1, which is used for system maintenance, particularly if there is some problem.

I would use runlevel 1, and then go check the boot log (particularly /var/log/boot.omsg, I think this is the log for the previous boot). See what is going on.