Cannot access box after hdparm experimenting

[Ulla Russell <ulla.russell@pp1.inet.fi>]

Hello

Disaster has struck and I need some help.

I was experimenting with hdparm for the first time and
managed to freeze my system - I was in X at the time.
I was unable to get back to the console - tried ^alt-backspace,
and ^alt-f1... no joy.

In the end I had to just switched off the machine. When I tried
to power up again I just saw loads of stuff flying past on the
screen - I was unable to make out what.

I have some parted boot- and rootdisks. I ran fsck -fy /dev/hda.

When I reboot now the booting progresses better but then stops
with the message:

   "kernel panic: No init found. try passsing init= option to kernel"

I rebooted and tried typing the following at the lilo prompt:

   "linux init=/bin/bash"

and 

   "linux init=/sbin/init"

but I had no joy. The boot process ended with the same message as b4.

Does anyone have any tips that might help me recover my system. I have
been pleased with debian. Reinstalling would be a useful experience but
I would like to be able to get things running without reinstalling.

t.ukr