problems after apt-get upgrade

["Colin Cotter" <colinjcotter@gmail.com>]

Dear list,

    I did a regular apt-get upgrade on my laptop yesterday, with a lot
of new updates. Now when I try to boot my 2.6.15 kernel I get

... ... can't access tty; job control turned off
/dev/hda1 does not exist
...
...

Everything works fine with my 2.6.12 kernel. Does anybody know why
this has happened and how to fix it? Also, when I try to run apt-get
update having booted the 2.6.12 kernel, apt says it is
"keeping back" about 200 packages.

What is wrong?

best wishes

--Colin