partition check error at boot time

[Allen Wayne Best <linux atoka-software com>]

hello:

i am having a real difficulty booting one of my systems. i installed the 
latest kernel the rh8.0 system: kernel-2.4.20-20.8.i386.rpm. i don't know if 
this had anything to do with the problem or not. at any rate, after doing an 
upgrade of the kernel (rpm -Fvh kernel-2.4.20-20.8.i386.rpm), i rebooted. 
now, a most mysterious thing is happening. during boot, i get the following 
message

attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi 0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
sda Read Capacity Failed
sda status = 1, message = 0, host 0, driver 08
current sd 00:00, sense key not ready
Additional sense indicates medium not present
sda block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB
patition check: sda I/O error dev 08:00, sector 0
I/O error dev 08:00, sector 0
unable to read partition table
(other stuff unrelated)
kernel panic

i can boot up using the cdrom to get to "linux rescue; chroot /mnt/sysimage." 
everything appears ok. if i boot up to "linux rescue" and skip mounting the 
disks, i can do a sfdisk -V /dev/sda. the result indicates the disk/partition 
table is okay.

any ideas are greatly appreciated.

-- 
regards,
allen wayne best, esq
"your friendly neighborhood rambler owner"
"my rambler will go from 0 to 105"
Current date: 23:35:16::282:2003