edit 2 or 3:
I figured it out. It was the fstab file. I was just hesitant to do so, as I am pretty sure 2.4 will not boot anymore, unless I change it back.
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Alright. I have a Dell Inspiron 6000D. I am dual-booting between Windows XP Pro and Debian Sarge. I am running the 2.4 kernel. My goal is to upgrade to the 2.6 kernel for better support of my wireless and network cards and for a few other reasons. I have so far been unable to get this to work. Normally I would have kept at it, but due to being new to linux in general I have no idea where to even begin in figuring out what is wrong. Below is a little journal I kept of my sixth attempt at this.

Due to me having under 5 posts, I can't actually post the URL. However if you google the following
"rob davey" debian inspiron 6000
you will find the website I refer to below.

1)adduser myself to /usr/src
2)Untar the 2.6.12.4 kernel (edit: from the kernel.org site) to /usr/src/linux-2.6.12.4/
3)used the kernel config here: {see the top} as a base. He has a different video card, but the laptop seems to mostly the same configuration.
4)I then ran make oldconfig to set the new options
5)I then ran make xconfig to set:
CONFIG_EXT3_FS=y
6)I then backed up my .config file
7)I then ran 'make-kpkg clean'
8)I then ran 'make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=-attempt6 kernel_image' as root. All looked good.
9)I then went 'cd /usr/src' and ran 'dpkg -i kernel-image-2.6.12.4-attempt6_10.00.Custom_i386.deb'
10)As I have gotten no apparent errors so far, I went 'gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst' and changed 'kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.12.4-attempt6 root=/dev/hda5 ro' to 'kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.12.4-attempt6 root=/dev/sda5 ro'. I saved the file and exited.
11)I then restarted the computer and selected my new kernel in grub
12)I then get many error messages quite fast. They all go along the same lines as:
fsck.ext3: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/hda8
/dev/hda8:
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, and yuo might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
If I do not change hda to sda as above, it goes for a little while and then kernel panics, talking about not finding /dev/console.

My use of sda instead of hda resulted from reading this page: {same as above}

My current thoughts on what is wrong:
-I need to mess around with fstab? Change all the references from hdaX to sdaX?
-I am just horribly messing this process up or missing a step...
-The configuration file I used has something messed up in it that is messing up the kernel I compile?

On a semi-related topic: When I run the make-kpkg kernel_image modules_image command, what exactly does the modules_image part do? I am assuming it builds whatever I have marked as modules in my kernel image. Does it output something like another deb file and do I need to do something with it? Does it populate the /lib/modules/ folder for the kernel automatically?
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edit: I also made a 7th attempt using the unstable sources from the debian website. I got further, I think, but it got stuck on modprobe because it couldn't find any modules. I did not keep track of this attempt and I am not sure what all happened besides it not working... Perhaps I should keep at using the debian source? Maybe I will try to use the precompiled linux-image...