While recompiling the kernel I took out the USB HID support ( USB Human Interface Device ) so I don't have any such devices on the machine.

RedHat still wants to start them & I end up having a bunch of error messages at bootup. I've located where it's initialised in the /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit.

This is the whole section :

needusbstorage=
if [ $usb = "1" ]; then
needusbstorage=`LC_ALL=C grep -e "^I.*Cls=08" /proc/bus/usb/devices 2>/dev/null`
LC_ALL=C grep 'hid' /proc/bus/usb/drivers || action $"Initializing USB HID
interface: " modprobe hid 2> /dev/null
action $"Initializing USB keyboard: " modprobe keybdev 2> /dev/null
action $"Initializing USB mouse: " modprobe mousedev 2> /dev/null
fi

Would it be safe to comment out this part ?

If you run ntsysv (as root, with root's environment (its not in any of the standard user paths) can you stop the USB HID being started on startup?

Of course, you could always try what you have suggested as well. But only after backing up the original file, or course.

Actually it shouldn't want to load this stuff if you don't have any USB HID device drivers installed but wel know all about "should" and Linux..

You can safely comment out everythig. Even neater would be to change the if clause to be always false. E.g. [ $usb = "imdefinentlynottrue" ]