Pendrived hosed by update

I setup a pendrive install and it worked great. Updater increased kernel version, and now I can’t boot. The hangup seems to be the initrd file…there’s a simlink to initrd-<newkernelver> in the extlinux dir, but no intrd-<newkernelver> file exists for me to re-point it to. Can anyone tell me how to make one? Renaming the initrd-<oldkernelver> did not work. I’m a fan, but not a pro, and I used this pendrive install to show friends and colleagues that linux has been getting better faster than windows and mac and is now ready for end-users who just want to get their work done, and not spend time making the OS work.

Thanks in advance.

GEF