Sorry I played with the question" sir. I will offer one more possible way of booting (temporarily) with your rootfs being a differenct partition on a system with one drive (and a myrida partitions). Can you get a "live CD" of the distro you are using that matches the kernel version? Usually the CD from which you boot to install is just that. The live CD may allow you to just boot with the default kernel, and all you have to do is specify the rootfs (and possibly other things). I do this with the Slackware installation disks all the time, as in, not often but with predictable and consistent results. Easiest way to boot an existing system. It is almost the same number of steps when botting with GRUB (1 or 2), interrupting the GRUB boot at the menu, and editing the kernel options prior to issuing the final boot command. Good luck!