I had a hibernate problem, which I overcame by booting safe mode and eliminating device drivers one by one.
As it turned out, the culprit on this occasion was the creative Liveware drivers (beta) for Win2k.
The problem surfaced when I tried to shutdown the computer. The shutdown message appeared, but after that the computer just locked. Sometimes I even received the BSOD.
Uninstalling/Disabling this device corrected the problem. Hopefully this won't be an issue with the final Liveware drivers.