OK final solution. It is not pretty.
Re-install with printer connected. Everything worked and configured. No hangs. No Printer Drake menus grayed out or unresponsive.
Re_install without printer connected. Printer Drake takes forever to come up first time with a new dialog I have not seen. It shows no printers connected but gives the ability to configure printers connected to other machine on the local network. However, the configuration tool is not able to see the printer on the other machine on my local network even if I give the IP. After that, the Printer Drake application falls back to being unresponsive and the CUPS service stops with the option to start at boot unchecked and the service will not start backup even if you check the start at boot and re-boot.
Finally, I re-install again with the printer connected. Install goes without event and the printer is configured after the install and PrinterDrake is happy. Move the printer back to the other machine and voila the new install can now see the printer on the other machine.
I repeated this a second time.
Install is 2010.1 on i686 with 2G ram and 160GB hard drive dedicated to linux.
SOLUTION: make sure you have a printer hard wired on the computer when installing.
And I thought this was the wireless age. NOT.