I believe your boots failed because:
a) you did not rm the module-info symlink, so on boot your new kernel
looked for old module dependencies and
b) your old kernel looked for it's modules, but you'd overwritten them
because your new kernel had the same version string as the old.
Try `rm /boot/module-info` and I'll bet you it'll work. I'd also rm the
System.map symlink, and replace it with the one in /usr/src/linux.
As for boot disks, get one of the single-floppy linux distributions. As
far as boot disks go, these are much more reliable, because they include
their own kernel, modules, utils, etc. without depending on anything on
your hard drive. Thus, your drive could go up completely in flames, and
you could still boot these.
-Matt Stegman
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
