3.8 32-bit on early 2006 MacBook Pro: Boot fails one time out of two

[UglyStuff]

For the record, I am now down to one in three times: My MacBook Pro will either not boot from Lite at all, like, I have a black screen that'll stay on forever (I call it the "Black screen of Nothingness", or BSON*) until I force-shutdown the machine, or it will show a 10-second timeout grub then reboot, or finally will display a 30-second timeout grub and boot to my satisfaction.

I would really like to know what's wrong. System is fully up-to-date, running the latest 4.40.x kernel, with all the bells and whistles.


* Pronounced "Bison"... :-)