kernel upgrade problems

ok. I dnloaded kernel 2.4.18 and moved the tarball to /usr/src and
unpacked it (after saving my old /linux dir) I copied in the original
.config file into /usr/src/linux

Next I did a make mrproper to use the .config file

then I did a make menuconfig and looked over the kernel settings.
Everything looked good so I exited and saved the settings.

Next make dep and make clean and then make bzImage.

now for the good part. I ran make modules to install my kernel modules.

Those steps are in the slackware linux essentials book that came with my
slackware 7.1 distro.

Now I departed from the book a little because I wanted to save the
original 2.2.16 kernel in case of problems.

the book says to do the following:
mv /vmlinuz /vmlinuz.old
cat arch/i386/boot/bzImage > /vmlinuz
mv /boot/System.map /boot/System.map.old
cp System.map /boot/System.map


What I did:
cat arch/i386/boot/bzImage > /2.4.18
mv /boot/System.map /boot/System.map.old
cp System.map /boot/System.map

Next I added the 2.4.18 image to lilo.conf

I ran /sbin/lilo

everything looked good to this point so I rebooted and chose the 2.4.18
kernel to boot.

Now is when things get interesting. When the kernel was loading it
appeared that all the modules that were trying to load at startup were
broken.

When I ran modprobe I got the following error:

can't open dependencies file /lib/modules/2.4.18/modules.dep (no such
file or directory).

Of course all my modules are busted so doing much of anything is pretty
much out of the question since most drivers I run as modules.

When I read the modules howto it says that when running make modules
that a directory called /usr/src/linux/modules is created and the kernel
modules are placed in it. This directory is not present and doesn't show
up when I run make modules in /usr/src/linux.

Does anyone have a workaround for this? I have not been able to locate a
fix.

Craig S.