I am using kernel 2.4.2-2
I compiled it using following steps :

make xconfig
make dep;make clean
make bzImage
make modules;make modules_install

Now I copied bzImage to /boot and made appropriate changes to
lilo.conf I executed /sbin/lilo

Now while booting linux I get following errors:
modprobe:Can't locate module opl3sa2 {My sound card is Yamaha and I
had enabled this module}

I tried sndconfig which gave me following error :
You don't seem to be running kernel with modular sound enabled
(soundcore.o was not found in the module search path)
{ I had enabled modular sound }

The second error is as follows:
mount:fs type vfat not supported by kernel { I had enabled this
during the configuration}

I tried booting through my original kernel but still I get these
errors.
Please help.
Thanks in advance.

After your reboot into the newly compiled kernel was depmod -a executed by your install scripts? If not then run that and see what happens. At the risk of being insulting, you sure that you edited lilo.conf correctly to load the new kernel. Also, if you are recompiling the same kernel as you currently have on the system you will want to remove the old modules (rm -rf /lib/modules/<kernelNo>) before doing a make modules_install.

HTH

Jamie...

Incidently I did not execute depmod.
Afterwards I made a new kernel with depmod. It still wasn't working (I had prob with vfat)
I used many config options and made different kernels (about 5)
before arriving at this working kernel.

I do not remember the exact options I used. Is there some file
where the options are stored so that I can refer them while further
tweaking my kernel?

How do I know whether my new kernel is better than the default one?
Please enlighten.

There is the .config file in the root of you kernel source that stores all your options (typically found in /usr/src/linux/).

As for how you know if its better - do more things work or things work slight faster? Is the newer kernel smaller, so uses less memory? These are normally signs of a 'better' kernel, however people normally recompile their kernel to support new hardware, change settings or just to keep upto date with the bug fixes... so its normally a matter of the new kernel doing more or having fewer known bugs rather than being 'better'.

cheers

Jamie...