kernel reboot failing with MODPROBE error

[Ed Young <eddythejekyll@gmail.com>]

First of all, is there a good Debian kernel building howto?

When rebooting with a new kernel I get an error something like
kernel panic MODPROBE /lib/module/2.6.8/modules.dep no such file or directory.
This file exists the the above directory.

I installed the debian package kernel-source-2.6.8 and bunzip'd and
untarred the package. I set the sym link linux to point to the source
dir.

I built the kernel like this
make menuconfig without selecting anything other than the default.
make clean, make bzImage, make modules, make modules_install.

I have two modules directories:
The new one for the kernel source:
  drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 2005-12-05 10:14 2.6.8
The one from the kernel supplied by the distribution:
  drwxr-xr-x  5 root root 4096 2005-12-04 19:06 2.6.8-2-686

I fixed up grub menu.1st so the new kernel was selectable.

When I reboot I get the kernel panic message above.

What am I doing wrong and where can I look for a howto on correct
debian kernel building technique?

Thanks and please advise,

Ed