After a game hangs and pcsx2 crashes, the ps2 console menu looks like this, and the only way to get it back to normal is to do a full clean reinstall of pcsx2.
When you want to play a game, just click "system" and then "Reboot CDVD (fast)". It'll skip the ps2 boot menu and just start up the game (that you selected in the iso selector) straight away
found the problem guys, it's the EE timing hack, console works fine when i turn it off.
i am also aware that i can fast boot games, but sometimes i want to access the config menus on the ps2 system.