I've been pulling my hair out trying to get a 2.6.17 series kernel to work on two separate computers for about two weeks now. I tried everything I found here and on Google. I finally looked at how I had the 2.6.16 kernel setup and I just noticed tonight that the Kernel-config support under General Setup was unchecked, but it was checked on the 2.6.17 series. I unchecked and now have a working 2.6.17.7 kernel up and running