It seems that with the recent bootloader version 75, the number of boot problems has significantly increased.
Not talking about the situation where the box doesn't switch on when the power is plugged in, we all know how to deal with that.
But another problem, which we used to have a long time ago, where the box boots normally, but /etc/init.d/bootup crashes before it can load the drivers, so the boot process stops with the process bar at something like 25%.
This problem had been gone for several bootloader versions, but now with 75 it seems to be back.

Many users have reported a significant increase of this problem, since we upgraded from 74 to 75.

well, lets hope there were a few more changes than just that.
It's never a good sign if small changes cause big problems.

Looking at todays driver changelog, I might have drawn the wrong conclusion about the bootloader being the cause of the problems.