Hard Drive hdb becomes hdf !!!

["Thomas H. George" <lists@tomgeorge.info>]

I built a new computer with two hard drives and installed XP Home 
Edition on the first drive.  The second drive contains my Debian system 
- kernel 2.6.17 and Testing.  I intended to use disc 1 of a Sarge 
installation set as a rescue disk to access hdb and run lilo to convert 
this box to a dual boot box.

boot: rescue=/dev/hdb5 failed.

During the load

   "Partition Check
      hdd
     hde: hde1
     hdf: hdf1,hdf2 < hdf5, hdf6, hdf7, hdf8 >"

so I tried.

boot: rescue=/dev/hdf5

which stopped with

   "Warning: Unable to open and initial console
     Kernel Panic: No init found.  Try passing an init= option to the 
kernel"

I don't know why the letters changed and what init option I should use.  
The hard drives are master and slave on ide 1.  There are two 
connectors, ide 1 and ide 2 on the motherboard.

The motherboard is KA3 MVP and the processor is an AMD Athlon 64 3800.

(Note: Only the Debian Sarge disc knows what's out there.  My Knoppix 
CD, my bbc-2.1 CD, my Damn Small Linux CD and two Debian boot floppies 
all fail.)

How can I regain access to my Debian system?

Tom George