Grub have gone BRAINDEAD!!!

[compugen]

I am quite new to linux. I am running into a problem which is quite wierd. I had installed linux on primary slave by mistake and later wanted to use in master boot. Following was the situation when I installed::
Root /dev/hdb5
Swap /dev/hdb6
Home /dev/hdb7

I read through the forum and found the thread for bootloader at length. I did exactly the way it is written there...

Grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
Grub> root(hd0,4)
which gave me some info about file system that was ext something.
Grub> kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz ......
Grub> initrd (hd0,4)/boot/init....
then boot.

System booted. It did work till the ""WELCOME TO MANDRAKELINUX 10.1. PRESS 'I' to enter interactive startup"" >>I did not do anything here<<

The last screen that i can see says::

Mounting root filesystem
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with orderered data mode.
Initrd finished
Freeing unused kernel memory: 200k freed
INIT: version 2.85 booring
Mounting proc filesystem [OK]
Mounting sysfs on /sys [OK]
Unmounting initrd: [OK]
Setting default font (lat0-16): [OK]

Welcome to Mandrake Linux 10.1
Press 'I' to enter interactive startup.
COnfiguring kernel parameters: [ok]
Setting clock (localtime): Wed May 24 01:37:47 KIST 2006 [ok]
Loading default keymap [ok]
Setting hostname localost: [ok]
Initializing USB controller (uhci-hcd)[ok]
Mount USB filesystem[ok]
Loading USB printer[ok]
Checking root filesystem
fsck.ext3Possibly non-existent or swap device?
:No such device or address while trying to open /dev/hdb5
Failed to check filesystem. Do you want to repair the errors? (y/n)
(beware,, you can lose data)


Now I said yes and it asked root pass. I gave it and then it came up with


Possibly non-existent or swap device?
e2fsck 1.35 (28-feb-2004)
fsck.ext3: No such device or address while trying to open /dev/hdb5 [FAILED]

*** An error occurred during the file system check.
*** Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot
*** when you leave the shell.
Give root password for maintenance
(or type Control-D for normal startup):

Tried both and none is working now.

This hdb5 was the thing that was seconday ide earlier now changed to (hd0,4)

And to my surprise i can still load linux if i turn back things the way they were; ie. my hdd on Slave jumper settings without anything else.

Please help...

[compugen]

Another thing that I observed.
For Grub::
Since i am a bit familliar with GRUB. I tried looking in device.map which does not shows hd0 = dev/hda5 instead its hdb.
For LILO:
I can not change anything since when i do sbin/lilo it says error.

Problem is I cant attach any new device or swap master and slave drives. Or for that matter USB. Now if i do i get filesystem errors. If i dont, run linux and then try fixing lilo.conf or grub menu I get errors compiling kernel. Since the device is not present... for instance...
right now its like
dev/hdb5 but it should be dev/hda5 in primary master. Now question is supposedly I put this as external USB drive that would be /dev/sda so in that case I ll again have to go through this cumbersome thing or can I save myself by adding entries like we do in NT loaders as follows:


Linux Primary Master >>> when disk is master
Linux Primary slave>>> when disk is slave
Linux Primary USB Master >>> when disk is usb



pls help.