You did correct syntax to link vmlinuz-2.6.8.1 in /boot ?

ln -s vmlinuz-2.6.8.1 vmlinuz

yes, I actually edited my post (at the bottom of the last page) but to recap. I think it's cause I'm using a boot disk since My WinXP MBR got screwed. So how do I make the right vmlinuz boot from the disk?

You have to store a bootloader in your MBR. This is a little program that will let you boot in a partition that you indicate to it with a config file.

On slackware the main bootloader is lilo but now there is grub, for my part, I use grub.

You have to decide which bootlader you install in your MBR

Yeah I'm fine with bootloaders (I personally use LILO) but my point is I can't write to the MBR of my primary drive atm because it's... well, it's dead. So I've been using a boot disk, but that boot disk is from the original install, so it uses the original vmlinuz (that's on the disk) to boot the 2.4.26 kernel (I think). So what I need to know how do is write a new boot disk, with the correct vmlinuz.

What is your kernel image size ? Will it fill in a floppy ?

And how do you know your mbr is dead ? It is weird because your dbr works as the system can see partitions...

Hey, sorry about the delay but I had to go out. I know the MBR is fried cause it's on another physical drive. Originally I had XP and slack dual booting fine but I was plugging along in windows and all of a sudden the HDD crashed and it automatically rebooted. Then at boot it wouldn't run LILO, saying "Error loading operating system" because ntloader wouldn't run, which then references lilo. As for the image size, I found out the hard way that it's just too big for a boot disk (1.9MB), so I'm thinking all I can do is reinstall windows to get lilo working again, then boot from the correct image with no boot disk. The reason I didn't want to reinstall XP was that only the MBR was fried, I could still read the files from slack, so I wanted to backup my stuff before formatting.

EDIT: although I suppose I could backup to this kernel first, then reinstall XP, then install lilo correctly....

EDIT take 2: WOO! I also found a win32 prog that can read from reiserfs, so I can get stuff BACK onto windows!