Okay, here's some more info that might help, or just convince you that I need to reinstall.
When Linux boots, it recognizes my physical disk, and then later, yes, all partitions... hda1,hda2,hda3. Also, it is still type 83. And I looked at the error message again, and it actually says this: Kernel Panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:03 Just to let you know, I must confess I was starting to not-scorn Microsoft for the last few months, but this pretty much undoes most of that. I join the rest of you as arch-nemesis's to the corrupted empire!
