12.04 64bit apt-get hangs

Hi folks,

Been running 12.04 64 bit (XFCE desktop) since about May, and have been pretty satisfied. Lately my usual update path of command-line "apt-get update, apt-get upgrade" has been hanging after building the initramfs image and while adding entries to the grub menu - specifically, it can't seem to get past "Memtest86". The last time I tried this, the apt utilities suggested running "dpkg --configure -a", but that is hanging in the same place.

Any suggestions?

Specifically, ps aux in another terminal and grepping for dpkg
shows that the hang is in kexec-tools.postinst configure 1:2.0.2-3ubuntu4

while dpkg --configure -a would hang on the kexec-tools, it seems that
dpkg --configure --pending cleared the error, and upgrade seems to be working now