ld returned 190 exit status

[Network Admin]

Things on my system break at different times, at bootup it'll say that 
that rm is broke and puts my eth0 in promiscues mode... sometimes i even 
see rm in my ps list of a file I deleted earlier. So first thing I 
thought was wrong was the kernel, so I tried to update it and I got this

Superuser:115:linux# make menuconfig
rm -f include/asm
( cd include ; ln -sf asm-i386 asm)
make -C scripts/lxdialog all
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux/scripts/lxdialog'
collect2: ld returned 190 exit status

>> Unable to find the Ncurses libraries.

I can't find anything on the net for a 190 exit status... so I updated 
my binutils, nothing, updated my glibc nothing, and I updated my gcc, 
nothing... This is only an example compile that should work...all my 
other programs report the same error with ld returned a 190 exit 
status...I'm lost right now=( Here's my info:

slackware 7 hybrid
ncurses 5.2
gcc 2.95.3
glibc 2.2.5
binutils 2.9.1

reinstalling from scratch is not an option, any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Benjamin