What do I need to do to add an entry into grub to preserve my ability to mount an existing working kernel BEFORE I install a newer kernel. Under Lilo I knew how to do this, with grub as was installed when I upgraded to SuSE 8.1 I nearly lost my whole damn system when I recently tried upgrading my self compiled 2.4.20 kernel to a mantel 2.4.20-17. Yes, I know the risks of mantel kernels but I figured I was on safe ground since I could boot back into my previous working kernel if the mantel kernel did not operate as I expected. Well, I was wrong I did something wrong and my old kernel will not boot either. After expending much effort working in the restore mode and learning much more about kernels than I care to know I'm fully recovered. Now my question: Can anyone explain to me what I must put into the grub menu.1st file to add such an entry to do what I have described above? What I did was added an entry to /boot/grub/menu.1st as follows: title oldkernel20 kernel (hd0,5)/vmlinuz.org-20 root=/dev/hda7 apm=on acpi=off vga=791 nosmp maxcpus=0 disableapic initrd (hd0,5)/initrd.org-20 The kernel line is NOT word wrapped, this email program did that. vmlinuz.org-20 is a copy of my previous working kernel initrd.org-20 is a working copy of my previous working kernel Upon boot, my added title is visible and selectable. The kernel starts loading and makes it all the way to attempting a "hotsync USB" line where it dies and will go no further and generates no error message. It takes a control-alt-del to reboot which of course was a catch 22 since the new kernel does not work either. As I sated, I fixed everything and I'm back in business. Thank you for reading this far. Now to restate my question: How do you folks modify your working system to provide an escape route in case a newer kernel install bombs? Thanks in advance... Harry