Dear Lyn,
I've encountered several similar problems when W2K get stuck in loading profiles. These are the problems that I have solved.
1. User has installed application that is not specifically designed for W2K. Usually, the culprits are those free utilities that claim can boost speed of IE and cache manager. Try to remove/uninstal those utilities.
2. MBoard vxd driver for AGP steering, if you use third party AGP card. Usually ASUS or ABIT MBoard has its own vxd driver for AGP steering, but it's unnecessary for VIA Tech MBoard. A wrong version of the driver sometimes doesn't give you the blue screen, but usually W2K gives warning about driver incompatibility.
3. Sometimes windows repair would work but the chances of the problem is solved is 50:50
4. Besides all, reinstal everything (after backing up user's important data) mostly cure those unsolved mysteries.
A tutor of mine once said, "A simple and straightforwad installation of W2K usually doesn't give any problem, but the funky tweaking to improve its performance always crashes the system."