[CentOS] Device Labels being lost in CENTOS 4.4?

We have run CENTOS 3.x on a large number of machines used for technical 
computations, both 32/64-bit servers and 32-bit dual-boot desktops,  
with no issues whatsoever over a long period of time. We have since 
upgraded the servers to CENTOS 4.4 but a small number of dual-boot 
desktops which have been created recently using CENTOS 4.4/XP have very 
rapidly started to exhibit this symptom:

The dual-booting (GRUB is the 1Y bootloader) works OK for a while but 
then on a subsequent reboot from Windows to CENTOS, the boot halts in 
GRUB with an error message that mkdevlabel could not see label "/1" i.e. 
the root partition. The fix we adopted was to convert the LABEL 
references in grub.conf and /etc/fstab to use the "traditional" real 
device names not the symbolic links pointed to by the LABELs. I do not 
think that there is any option in the installer to avoid using device 
labels for partitions ?

Trawling on Google shows others have seen similar issues with other 
distros based on RHEL4 - has anyone seen this with CENTOS, know why it 
happens and if it can be avoided? Certainly,  fixing it is tedious as 
you have to boot from CD, then replace the two affected files above, so 
any suggestion that avoids this issue would be much appreciated before 
we attempt to migrate our desktops to CENTOS 4.4

FYI the PCs concerned have Intel 945 motherboards and SATA drives.

Les Oswald



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