I don't know if it is related to your flash partition though. Are the lights faint in intensity? Do they stay that way?
This is what happens in the boot process (The way I understand it and see it in the bootlog from serial).
1- power on - uboot is loaded - some checks are done
2- There are 2 partitions of 40mb each that uboot will check and compare. The main one is at 0x180000 and the copy is at 0x4980000. Uboot does not scan the whole 40mb (as it would take too long) but uses the uboot image header of each partition to know the size and will only check the partiton up to that size (about 13mb for padavan i think)
3- If one of the partitions has corrupt data it will automatically copy the sane one to the other one and then boot the first one (this is normally what happens with a bad flash)
4- If both are sane but different then it will automatically copy the main one to the backup one (this is what happens when you upload a new image).
In your case it's hard to tell since the bootloader should have taken care of corrupt data. a TTL will definately give more info about what's happening. I will pm you