Hmmm. F8 always just brings me to the boot screen (normal, LKGC, Safe Mode etc).
At any rate, seems the issue was a dying hard drive that has now passed away.
I was able to access the drive using Knoppix with no hangups, so I had dismissed a bad drive, but I took the drive out of the case tonight to put it in an enclosure to backup some data before trying a repair install and the drive will no longer power up after being handled.
Never could get it to work in the enclosure and now that it's back in the system, it won't power up.
I suppose that answers that.