I had a similar problem, with firefox not starting and ps hanging. It went away when I disabled sound support from the kernel. I never managed to get the sound working anyway, though modules would load correctly. Not sure if it was a hardware issue, a kernel bug, or a chip revision not supported by the kernel.
If it's the same problem, probably you should take a look at the kernel level. If it helps, I can give you more information about my setup. Best regards, Bernardo
