Bootup getting stuck

I am facing a strange problem. We have a storage adapter connected to a
PCI slot, and whenever a hard disk is attached to this adapter, the
system stops booting at the beginning of the kernel boot process
(although bios boot is over where it prints information about the
adapter). The driver for the adapter has NOT been installed yet. So I
am wondering how can this happen during kernel bootup. Of course this
could have happened if the driver was installed and had bugs in it, but
since it's not installed, how is this possible during kernel bootup?
Does the adapter firmware has a role to play during kernel bootup? I'm
not sure how it usually happens, so any information will be most
welcome. Please note that the disk with OS is separate and is not
attached to the above controller/adapter.

This is happening on a RedHat system with kernel 2.4. With RedHat
kernel 2.6, however, the system can boot even with a hard disk attached
to the controller. I am providing the message from the screen at the
point the bootup is getting stuck.

booting `RH EL AS3.0 U5 32bit (2.4.21-32.ELsmp)`
root(hd0, 0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.21-32.ELsmp ro root=LABEL=/
[Linux - bzImage, setup = 0x1400, size = 0x14b6db]
initrd /initrd - 2.4.21-32.ELsmp.img
[Linux - initrd @ 0x37fa3000, 0x4c92b bytes]

This is happening on other RedHat kernel 2.4 systems too (even with
driver installed), which are working fine otherwise.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

.

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