[ILUG] Kernel panic - not sync: attempted to kill init

[Colin O'Keeffe]

Our debian server had a power failure and this is the result after a reboot

SCSI device sda: 312477 512-byte hdwr sectors (159989MB)
SCSI device sda: drive cache: writeback, no read
Attempting manual rescue
swsusp: Suspend partition has wrong signature?
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data
exec: 433: /sbin/init : not found
Kernel panic - not sync: Attempted to kill init

I've checked RAM, ran a memtest86 on it for 5 hours. Swapped sticks and they
seem fine, installed a bare min. version of debian on a new HD and it boots
fine, so whats the fix for this problem..