I made a bol***cks of it!

Help!

I had a power failure whilst linux was booting up and now it won't
recognise my mouse. I have been messing about with it almost the whole
day today (or at least, groping around in the dark) and I'm no nearer a
solution. I even tried, unsuccessfully, to build a new kernel and now
I'm right back where I started. I started the day with good intentions
and was hoping by now to have persuaded a soundcard and a modem to work
and to have upgraded EMC to the latest release and installed KD desktop.
As it is I'm sitting here looking very glum with a machine I don't
understand and a dead mouse!
If anyone can enlighten me, there are two main things I don't
understand.
1. What is missing to start up the mouse - it is still attached to
'COM1' and, when linux boots I notice that it still claims to be loading
'gmu' mouse driver but it is totally unresponsive. I have checked the
physical wiring and it does work in Windows '95 which I have in another
partition on a separate hard disk (hda1 - linux is on hdb1-5). I got the
modem working in Windows attached to COM2 but haven't managed to pursue
getting it configured in linux.
2. What went wrong with building a new kernel and how do I get round it
if such a rebuild is necessary. Since I didn't need to install an
updated version, I assumed I would be able to use the original source
file again and so I deleted the linux directory and linked the existing
linux-2,0,36 file in /usr/src. I then did the usual make config which
rattled away for quite a while and then the other commands up to make
modules - this returned a number of errors saying nothing was to be done
but make modules_install seened to work OK> however, when I then came to
copy the zImage into the /boot directory, there was no zImage in the
/usr/src/linux....etc directory.
I have assumed that the power outage was the cause of my problems since
everything seems to work Ok in Windows - but I could be wrong :-(
Any help will be very gratefully received.

Best wishes

Ian

--

Ian W. Wright LBHI
Sheffield Branch Chairman of the British Horological Institute.
Bandmaster and Euphonium player of the Hathersage Brass Band. UK.
See our homepage at:- http://www.iw63.freeserve.co.uk or
http://www.iw63.demon.co.uk/ or
http://www.GeoCities.com/Hollywood/6067/index.html

'Music is the filling of regular time intervals with harmonious
oscillations.'