[NCLUG] Fedora 8 install

[bsimpson at att.net]

I've just installed Fedora 8 on my laptop (eMachine M5312) but it
fails to boot, stopping with the following two lines:

  Loading ata_generic.ko module
  Trying to resume from /dev/sda8

where it just hangs.  On the same machine I have a working Fedora
Core 4 install, and it refers to the (single) harddrive by hda
and its partitions as hda1 - 11.  (Yes, I use a lot of partitions.)
During installation of Fedora 8 I noticed that it refers to the
harddrive as sda and its partitions as sda1 - 11.  Why the
discrepancy, and might this be the cause of the hang?

My (Fedora 8) partitions are:
sda3   /boot
sda8   swap
sda10  /

I thought I'd look at the initrd-2.6.23.1-42.fc8.img file that
was placed in /boot.  I extracted its contents with:
  zcat /boot/initrd-2.6.23.1-42.fc8.img | cpio -idv
and saw the section in its init file where the boot process hung.
Without modifying anything yet I tried to recreate a new initrd
file with:
  find . -depth | cpio -ov | gzip > <path>/initrd-2.6.23.1-42.fc8.img
but when I tried using it the boot sequence ended earlier, this
time with a kernel panic.  I'm on new ground here - haven't tried
anything like this before - found above commands on the Internet
and not sure if that is the best approach.  Both commands were
executed in same directory while running Fedore Core 4.  Should I
try them while running Fedora 8 (using install DVD, recovery option)?

Is the hda/sda discrepancy a problem?  If yes, what option(s)
should I specify while installing?  And why can't I deconstruct
and reconstruct an initrd file that works?

Brian S