I just got a P4 Machine (1.8 Ghz, MSI 6526 GL Mobo) and no matter what OSX version dvd i tried it would not boot. If i ran it with -v, it would say something like

"Using 2621 buffer headers and 2621 Clusters buffer headers ......." and would hang there

I tried -x -v platform=X86PC / ACPI.

I thought, I finally got a P4 and it turns out to be f*cked.

Anyway, this is how i fixed it.

Got a WinXPE CD. I didnt have windows, so i had to use one. If you have Windows you wont need the XPE CD. If u donot know what XPE is install Windows.

Next i got a sweet brainwave (Its a bit slow, took 3 Days to come up with answer)

1) I got my 10.4.1 diskimage
2) DD'd this image onto P4's HDD
3) Booted 10.4.1 after much ado, with -x -v platform=X86PC
4) Now when I insert the OSX 10.4.3 DVD,(with -x -v platform=X86PC), it runs perfect. No errors.
5) Now I booted back into windows, deleted 6.6 GB 10.4.1 Partition
6) Created 10 GB partition with 'diskpart', id=af primary
7) Booted DVD with -x -v platform=X86PC
8) Formatted 10 GB partition with Disk Utility
9) 10.4.3 Worked perfect. Boots up without any options.


CONCLUSION
If you are having problems installing,
1) Create an 'id=af' primary partition using 'diskpart'
2) Install 10.4.1 using the disk image (I hope u find it at piratebay or demonoid)
3) If needed as last resort, upgrade your 10.4.1 to 10.4.3 then 10.4.5 and finally 10.4.6

EDIT
4) Make sure the HD you are installing to is Primary Master. (Thanks to S1LV3R)

NOTE: I didnot reburn the install DVD. Attached below is my created (put together from other guides) guide on how to install 10.4.1. Please put your comments

You could try VMware.

i had the 'waiting for root device' for ages when trying to install osx86 on a 2nd hard drive (windows xp on the first). after a lot of head scratching (about 2 days worth) i tried reconnecting the 2nd drive as primary master and bingo it worked....

hope that helps someone else.

VMware is toooooooooo o oo oo o o oo ssll ll l ll o o w o oo woow w w ww ww.. I can sadly say I would rather go Windows than not native OS X .

S1LV3R, I can confirm that. Your tip works great. Ill add it to the thread above.

i had the still waiting root device , and just changed the HD where osx was installed to IDE1, and in bios i changed the first boot device to the Second HD, where xp is so os selector would appear.

Using VMWare 5.0 you can connect physical drive as virtual. Install in VMWare and reboot to native.

Morden, for some reason that never worked for me.

excuse me , "osx should be in "primary master", right? i have mine in secondary master and it works for a long time now. does that mean it works whether primary or secondary as long as it is master? anyone have the same setup as mine?

It's different for different hardware, different install versions etc. I have two desktops with it on, and one required the hdd to be primary slave and dvd primary master no matter what. The pentium machine didn't seem to give a crap either way. As for my laptop, {censored}, you can't so easily swap stuff like that! VMWare dosn't work either because I have a 400mhz Dothan, most of which have no PAE so VMWare dosn't work right (even with the paevm=true fix)

Removing ApplePS2Controller.kext from /system/library/extensions skips the detection.
Works fine for me, no more "still waiting for root device" problems since then

Well after much wailing and nashing of teeth. I finally have Darwin getting installed. I was suffering from the dreaded "still waiting for root device" error for quite some time and since I have a laptop (compaq R3000, P4, 512 Mb Ram, ATI Radeon, etc) i could not switch my cdrom drive from the secondary ide to the primary or however the laptop has it setup on the inside. This frustrated me immensly (There is a reason I am called errorinspelling) till I had an apostrophe, epitath, appithany, eh something like that, Anyhow I simply stole the DVD drive from my wifes computer, which made her somewhat upset but I told her it was in the name of progress, tore apart my buddies external usb drive case, gutting the harddrive from it and replacing it with mine wifes DVD drive. Of course if you simply have an external USB DVD drive that really could save you from getting yelled by both your friend and your wife. Anyhow plug er into the laptop (It does help having a leptop that will boot off of USB) and VIOLA!! CELLO!! BASS!! Eh ANyhow it booted and started the installation. So now that you are done reading this you just have to ask yourself, Couldn't this guy simply said Try booting off an external DVD drive instead of having me read all this drivel? Cheers and Beers For Many Years!!!

Also, I've seen elsewhere where it's recommended that you set your HDD to Master instead of CS. But I was getting the "Still waiting..." error with an SATA install, and it worked after changing the DVD drive from CS to Master.

Hello All.....

i've also have the same problem with still waiting for booting device.....i've tried everything and this is my last scream for help. I checked my jumpers on cd rom Hd--->> on cdrom drives it was on master and slave just as i should be. I only have one harddrive 120gb ata..im running it on p4 2.8 and the installation process went through just fine...no problems...after installation it reboots and promts "STIILL WAITING FOR BOOT DEVICE" i ve searched al over the internet and nothing related to my problem were found...is there anyone in here that please ca´n help me??? i love mac and really wants to run it..please help me

best regards

shino
!!


PS : everyone in here are talking about swithching jumpers to Master and ect...that really dont help ..my jumpers are all set correct and im stilling getting the prompt...!!!nasty problem!!!!

It doesnt matter about jumpers because Computer select simply implies that the BIOS will label it as it sits on the rack according to its channel, so if its In master (primary) position on the channel then it will be labeled as primary. You have 2 sub channels on a channel master and slave end of the cord (master,) and middle of the cord (slave.)

As I have said above, there is no hard and fast rule for getting past this error.
Also give rd=diskXsY a try
where X = Disk number, 0 for first HDD, 1 for second HDD
Y = Partition Number, 1 for first partition, 2 for second partition.


To type this press F8 and type it during bootup. Also I have found that in most cases, OSX likes to boot from Primary partitions on Master HDD's

Thanks for your respond...can u be more specific...what does this command do??? how should that help my booting device problem?? please tell me a little more about this command....

shino

also when i type in the command it just says loading dariwnx86..nothing happends----

are you completly sure that all your hardware is supported Shino?

Yes iam---this is my hardware SPECS... Pentium 4 processor 2.8ghz Socket 478..Motherboard ASUS P4V8X SSE2..running Cd/rw and DVD/RW on same channel Ide Primary and secondary (Master, Slave) my Harddrive 120gb Maxtor ATA have its own channel alone as Master..i do not have other hd's. Also i have 1.5 GB ram ddr400 KIngston...so as you can see my specs should be strong enough to run this OS X 10.4.6..i installed a patch on the cd named Intel and AMD FOR SSE 2 for OS X..after the installation this the computer starts loading the OS X and then it just goes blank and starts restarting?? any idea?? before installing the Pacth for SSE 2 it came up with the still waiting for root device....so i got a step further but stil no GUI!!!!

can u help??

I'm trying to get to where I can pass flags at boot time, and I don't even know how to get Darwin to prompt me for them.

Hit F8 when it boots.

I was having the same problem. Quick tip to anyone else suffering - although the drive I nstalled to is NOT the primary, I was able to boot by changing my BIOS settings for my SATA to "compatible" from "enhanced" on my ASUS p5k.

Leopard install.

Hey I have tried the above cmd rd-disk0s2 and it booted up fine ..
But i dont want to type that cmd every time i boot it there a work around
regard
Mark

Haven't seen this fix posted anywhere yet. However I'm a noob here, so indulge me if it has.

Specs

MB - Asus M2NPV-VM
CPU - AMD 4200
Mem - 4GB
Video - XFX 8600GT 256 MB

Could not get anything to work to get past the "Still waiting for root device" and tried everything on this thread including boot options, mem limit etc.. I am also using all IDE hardware and had set HDD as master on CH0 and DVD as master on CH1. Nothing worked.

Finally set my IDE DVD to primary master on CH0 using the 80-pin ATA/100 cable and left the HD disconnected. Install got all the way through but of course could not find a disk. Then connected the HD to the 40 pin cable that came with the MB for DVD connection and again got an error. Light bulb overhead... Bought a SECOND 80-pin ATA/100 cable and connected the HD with it. Wahlah! - install worked perfectly. Now since most older MB's (B4 sata) shipped with ONE 80 pin cable for HD and one 40 pin cable for the CD/DVD I suspect many of the problems here may be related not just to hardware but how the MB cabling is set up. It would appear that the install disk needs BOTH the DVD drive and HD either connected to the same channel as Master/Slave using the 80 pin cable OR on separate channels with two 80 pin cables with DVD on ch0 and HD on CH1 with both devices set as master.

Hope this helps.

Cheers to all.

Here's my story...

I have successfully installed jas 10.4.8 intel. There's no problem with the whole installation except that it would freeze on reboot. So i reboot manually by pressing the power/restart button of my pc and take out the install dvd, then installation continues (the part where you have to input your name, etc.) and it would load the desktop promisingly (i can use OSX normally - but with low resolution and no sound - very basic). Then the dreaded reboot stall happens again when i restart the system, again, manually reboot it and after that I can't boot into OSX anymore - it says "still waiting for root device".

My system:

P4 2.8ghz prescott
P4M266A + via 8235 chipset
GeForce 7300GT 512mb
80GB hard disk
quintuple boot - WinXP - OSX - Mandriva - openSUSE - Ubuntu - my bootloader is grub/ mandriva it works perfectly. Good thing is I can re-install OSX86 without hurting the other OS's.
Keyboard/ Mouse set to PS/2

P.S.
My head is already spinning trying to find answers, all comments accepted. I dont know how other people manage to get it done within two days or so? amazing...

I have SATA2 Raptor X HDD. How to make it primary drive? None of the above tips working.

i'm getting this still waiting for root device error... i even pulled out my winxp hdd and cdrom to try booting into my ideneb installation. nothing works! help!

I'm having this problem on installation of Kalyway 10.5.2. I've tried removing all of my SATA devices, i've tried removing my IDE drive, and can't figure out why i get this error before even getting to the installer. My configuration is below:

hy everyone...i have an acer aspire 5520 laptop amd athlon 2x64 1,8gh ,video nvidia geforce 7000m/nforce 610m, hdd samsung 250 gb sata.what is wrong when i wanna install mac os x amd sse3 ,because is not show mi hdd??when y wanna chose the partition where to install mac os x is not enything there..what wrong with sata??some solutions?please guys i love so much mac and is to expensive for my poket:)please...sorry for my english

Hey!

I also have the problem "still waiting for root device" after a clean installation of "iPC 10.5.6 Final PPF5" on my girlfriends Toshiba Satellite L20-101 (Pentium M 1,7 GHz, 512MB RAM, Intel GMA900, Conexant Sound, Intel 2200BG Wifi).
The installation was no problem and everything worked fine, but when I try to boot now (tried with different booting parameters) there always comes this:


I tried "platform=X86PC" and "rd=disk0s1" without any changes. Unfortunately I can't change any Master/Slave-settings for the HDD and DVD-Rom but the HDD is set to Primary/Master, the DVD-Rom to Primary/Slave.

Does anybody have an idea of how I can solve this problem? Thank for your help!


Edit: Solved this problem by adding the "Intel ICHx SATA Driver"-kext during the installation! IT'S ALIVE and EVERYTHING works!!

hy there

i have the same error "Still waiting for root device error"

my specifications are

MOB: IntelD101GGC
PRO: 3.0 GHZ (HT)
HDD: Segate 500GB WDC Sata
VGA : Ati Readon xpress 200 series on board
sound card: Realtak

plz if there is any soulations kindly let me know

my DVD burner is on secondary slave
and HDD is on the S.M.A.R.T port 0 (3rd Master)

i dun know how to become it on 1st master. but there is one more porblem when my xp boot, on the screen
i can see that my defualt HDD is on the Primary Master but in BIOS setting its on 3rd Master

kindly tell me where i am wrong
I love mac, and i want to install it
it would be so kind of you if you could help me

thanks

Regards

I tried the same thing and it worked like a charm! You are truly a lifesaver.. thank you!
I am so grateful to this community for all the help they give!

I do have a suggestion though. Maybe a sticky post about every tested hardware configuration and what needs to be selected (as far as kexts to select or tick from your install DVD) to make installation easier. I got there the hard way, but who's to say it couldn't be made easier? It would at least give a link to paste to people who keep asking the same questions, right?

Thanks again all!
-Drift

hi drift,

i am soo damn tired bcos i was soo excited about installing mac os on my amd machine. but alas i get the dreaded "still waiting for root device error". can you please help me out. my config is as below,

m/b - asus m2v-mx se
cpu - amd sempron le 1100 (sse2 and sse3 compatible)
hdd- 80 gb sata
dvdwriter - ide(set as master).
2 gb ddr2 ram.

Not to overstate what was repeated over and over but if you encounter the error message "Still waiting for root device" here is your solution....


you need to run an IDE cd/dvd drive a sata cd/dvd drive will not work... then go into bios settings (del a several times at startup) and make sure your cd/dvd combo drive is recognized as master IDE drive. also if able to enable HDD smart monitoring do that as well.

this should bring you right to the os x86 leopard 10.5.1 installer (I am using iATKOS v1.0)


good luck

Well i'm on two gigabyte machines GA-35-DS3 and GA-45-DS3 and in both i tried it with SATA and IDE dvd's and without and with IDE harddisk and SATA Harddisk and without. I switched the internal IDE controller on and off and also this doesn't help.

Unfortunately i don't have my EFix-USB at this place. It worked perfect with this hardware configuration and didn't make any problem. I will try with a pure IDE Harddisk/DVD system (after installing from SATA DVD) again. Last try. Last Hope

Okay i found the error, the generic Intel ICHx SATA device are not valid for 9/10.
So on this mainboard you have to select a the ICH10 drivers and !NO! kernel from the list.
After this i got my iPC 10.5.6 Live DVD installed on the machine.