M7 Boot pauses over 20 s searching/loading drivers

M7 boot up process pauses gives error about missing key ENV_FSTAB_OPTS. Then - searching and loading drivers takes about 20 to 30 seconds, followed by bootsplash and desktop to KDE-4.3.1 “release 1”.

What happened?

That’s OK - it took over half an hour for my DVD to fully boot; see BZ 430284.

And, after I completed the installation, I still couldn’t boot due to the other problems with hal, etc.