Cannot mount root file system with vanilla kernel 2.6.24-rc3

[Micha Feigin <michf@post.tau.ac.il>]

I'm trying to compile vanilla kernel 2.6.24-rc3 due to some patches I need.

When I try to boot the new kernel I get the error:

vfs: Cannot open root device "sda3" or unknown-block(0,0)
please append a correct "root=" boot option. Here are the available devices:
[...]
[...] sda3
[...]

Kernel 2.6.23.1 boots with the same option and nearly the same config file
I did compile it with gcc 4.3 (which didn't work for me for kernel 2.6.23.8)
but it gave no error (when I fixed 2.6.23.8 to compile with gcc 4.3 it did give
me  similar error though)

Any ideas, or could this be gcc 4.3 that is not for the kernel yet?

Thanks