Strange behavior with 2.4.x on a Celeron

[Brad Chapman]

Hello,

   I have a Celeron 400MHz/66MHz with 256MB of RAM, a 6.4GB Quantum Fireball
and an onboard SiS AGP chipset. I am currently running 2.4.5. I have 
noticed
that when I unpack large tar files on my system, it will sometimes lock up
the hard disk, and I would also guess the filesystem code with it. When 
I try
to switch to another VC to kill the tar process, it hangs when I run ps ax.
When I try to run ANY command which accesses the hard disk, it also hangs.
Accessing /proc or /dev (I use devfs) doesn't cause any problems. Anyone 
have
any ideas?

Thanks,

Brad