Grub install problem (embed command fails)

[Sridhar Anandakrishnan]

All,   having a problem in booting gentoo (kernel 2.4.20 from a gentoo 
1.4 release)

GNU GRUB 0.93

I have a boot partition (/dev/hda5) and a root partition (/dev/hda7), 
and I install grub thus:
grub>root (hd0,4)
grub>setup (hd0,4)

The output of this is:

Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists...yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists...yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists...yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0,4)" ... failed (this is not 
fatal)
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0,4)" ... failed (this is not 
fatal)
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0,4) d /boot/grub/stage2 p 
/boot/grub/grub.conf" ...succeeded

During boot, I get the following message and then everything is frozen:

I get the grub boot screen with my 2 choices ("GNU/Linux" and "DOS").  
If I choose
GNU/Linux I get this:

   Booting GNU/Linux

   root (hd0,4)
   Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
   kernel (hd0,4)/kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r4 root=/dev/hda7
   [Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1400, size=0x10b221]

...and then everything is stuck....

Any help would be appreciated.