building and installing a new kernel makes my system unbootable

[Chan Chung Hang Christopher]

Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>   some strange things happening here -- for the first time, after i
> configured and built a new kernel, i ran "make deb-pkg" to turn it
> into a .deb package file, then used "dpkg" to install that, after
> which i still apparently had to run the appropriate incantations of
> "update-initramfs" and "update-grub", then i rebooted.
> 
>   the boot process is clearly trying to boot the new kernel
> (2.6.35-rc4+), only to fail with an error trying to mount the root
> filesystem.  no problem, thinks i, i'll just reboot, drop into GRUB
> and select the earlier, working kernel ... except that nothing i do
> will get me to GRUB -- not SHIFT, ESC or TAB.  when i installed my ner
> kernels manually, SHIFT always worked, but now, i have no idea what's
> changed.

sounds like stage1 not being able to load stage2


> 
>   i suspect i'll boot off of the CD and poke around, but i'm open to
> suggestions -- why would this have happened?  and is there
> *something* that will get me to GRUB?

reinstall grub.