Can't boot "Kernel panic: No init found"

[Rich <deblists@osg.saic.com>]

All,
I can no longer boot my Woody laptop. Here are the last few lines of
boot up:

	VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
	Freeing unused kernel momory 208k freed
	kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.

I use GRUB and have tried adding the kernel parameters 'init=/sbin/init'
and 'init=/bin/bash'. No dice.

Booting older kernels gives the same results.

I've booted with my recovery CD and fsck'ed my file system. No problems
found. I've confirmed that init exists and executes.

I'm stumped.   HELP!!!!

Thanks,

Rich B.