[newbie] boot up error

[Mafiajoe3]

hi. i hope that someone can help me with this problem.

i have been using linux mandrake for a while now. i started with 7.1 and have
worked up to 8.0. in the past i had never tried to re-compile the kernel but
once i got 8.0 i wanted to try it.  it took me a while to get the right
config so it would even start to boot. i thought i had got it last night
untill i got this error when i tried to reboot w/ the kernel i had just made,
" activating swap partition: swapon: cannot stat /dev/hda5 no such file or
directory"
"checking root filesystem(null)
the superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem. if the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem(and not swap or ufs or something else) then the superblock is
corrupt. you might try running e2fsck with an alternet superblock.  e2fsck -b
8193 <device>

e2fsck 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 Fs 0.5b, 95/08/09
fsck.ext2: no such file or directory while tring to open /dev/hda6."

i don't understand this cause i have the filesystem support in the kernel.
(not as a module) and i also put in /dev filesystem support.
i also know that /dev/hda5 is my swap and /dev/hda6 is my root.
i also tried that e2fsck -b command with a bunch of different numbers
(incuding the one it gave me and others close to that number) on different
devices ( /dev/hda6  and /dev/hda)
i don't know what could be causing this problem because it boots just fine w/
the original kernel.
i am running on a laptop w/ no windoze partitions if that helps
i hope that someone knows the solution to this problem and would help me out.

thanks,
JOE