The solution was not pretty but I had to reinstall the SL .5.5 from CD a
couple of weeks ago.
While updating all modifications to the SL 5.5 that was made to "grub.conf"
I added the fix recommended by a number of you.
"nosmp noapic"
It now works!
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-194.3.1.el5 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet nosmp noapic
nolapic:wq
When you overlay a new version with an old version something did not get
updated. I suspect that I did not update "grub".
One less problem.
Thank You
Larry Linder