Okay, i had exactly the problem described here. I am running a P3 866MHz with Illustrator 10, a pirated copy using the date trick and a crack app. As said before, when i opened Illustrator it would stall on "Loading Fonts" and nicely hog all my computer's resources.
So, what worked for me was to go to Program Files/Common Files/Adobe/Fonts folder and remove all my excess fonts i had (i had about 4,600 running!). tried it, it still didn't work. I had three font list versions running in the same folder. So i removed the two newer of the three versions. Tried running Illustrator again and BOOM! Like a well lubricated cam shaft.... anyway, hope this helps.