kernel-2.6.9-1.3_FC2 booting and installing problems

[fmdf at tiscali.it]

Hello.

1) up2date has installed vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.3_FC2, but my machine is unable to 
boot that kernel. When booting it prints hundreds of message saying, more or 
less, that "a user program is trying to access hardware directly". Have you 
ever seen this problem? How to fix it?

These are selected lines from /boot/grub/menu.1st:

 ...
 default=1
 timeout=10
 splashimage=(hd6,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
 title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.3_FC2)
  root (hd6,0)
  kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.3_FC2 ro root=/dev/sdg6
 ...

2) I also need to configure my own kernel, but up2date doesn't install the 
source code. I have seen that I can download a SRPM kernel, but I don't know 
how to make use of that package. I suppose I would need to install the source 
code somewhere, then patch with all Fedora patches, configure by myself, 
compile and eventually rebuild a RPM object that can be installed as usual. 

Now I run a vanilla 2.6.5, but up2date always complains: "You are running 
kernel-2.6.5-1.358custom, but it is not installed in RPM format. It is highly 
recommended that you run the official Red Hat Linux kernels. By running a 
custom kernel, you will miss out on any security fixes and functionality 
enhancements provided by Red Hat Linux, and your configuration is 
unsupported.".

So, how can I configure my own kernel, from a Fedora source, and eventually 
install it in RPM format?

I thank in advance all of you who will reply. At least I need to solve the 
problem #2.

Ciao,

Fabio