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[HOW TO] Get past 'Still waiting for root device errors'


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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... :D

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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

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 :blink:

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  • 3 months later...

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:

 

28042009047i21b.jpg

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! :D IT'S ALIVE and EVERYTHING works!!

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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

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

 

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

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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.

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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

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  • 2 weeks later...
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.

 

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

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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.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello there. I am pretty new to the Mac OS X world. So new that this is the first time I try to install it.

 

OK, I tried the iAtkos DVD. I can boot from it (with -v cpus=1), partioned the HDD (a SATA1 Samsung of 40GB), selected the "packages" and the installation began. When it was about 80% of the installation completed.... I got a kernel panic. Well, I had read that this version (iAtkos) was not really meant for my hardware, so I decided to go for something else.

 

So I got the Leopard 10.5.6 iPC (beta). Then I tried booting that one the same way I did with iAtkos, but I get the terrible "Still waiting for root device" :)

 

In hopes someone from here can help me, here goes my "hardware list":

 

Motherboard - ASUS P5K-SE

CPU - Intel core2quad (q6600)

RAM - 8GB (DDR2 800Mhz)

VGA - NVidia 9600GT (512MB of memory)

HDD - SAMSUNG SP0411C (40GB, Sata-1) (yes, I have other better hdd (sata2), but first I want to be sure Mac OS X will run on my PC)

DVD - HL-DT-STDVD-ROM GDR8161B (IDE Slave)

DVD-RW - HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H42N (IDE Master)

 

Just in case, below is the output of 'lspci' from my linux installation, so you can have a better view of the "components" I have:

 

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express DRAM Controller (rev 02)

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)

00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)

00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)

00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 02)

00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)

00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)

00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 02)

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 92)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801IB (ICH9) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801IB (ICH9) 2 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) 2 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G94 [GeForce 9600 GT] (rev a1)

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. L1 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (rev b0)

03:00.0 IDE interface: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88SE6121 SATA II Controller (rev b2)

 

I tried booting the install DVD with "-v cpus=1 "Intel ICHx SATA Driver"-kext", to no avail.

 

Hmmmmmmm on a second thought... should I have used "Intel ICH9 SATA Driver"-kext? My oh my. I'll try that one when I get home.

 

Oh, I tried booting the install DVD from the DVD and DVD-RW which brought me no different results.

 

Thanks for your attention

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Still couldn't make it work :)

 

I tried booting with the iPC 10.5.6 DVD, using -v cpus=1 "Intel ICH9 SATA Driver"-kext and nothing. I still get the horrible "Still waiting for root device".

 

I search a lot on google (and mostly here) but couldn't find anything that would help me.

 

Oh, before I forget... I think my problem could be related to this:

 

Waiting for boot volume with UUID 86EED391-097F-3633-BA4A-185A5D9AF487

 

I tried to identify which device that would be... but couldn't (or else I am too newbie to this stuff and I realy don't know what the "hack" is that UUID thingy

 

So I tried using the iAtkos DVD again. I booted it with -v cpus=1, repartitioned the HDD (that Samsung Sata-1 40GB), customized the "packages" and told it to install. Since it would take some time I went for a shower. When I got back the computer had rebooted and was on my Linux login screen. I thought "WTF?!?" Then I remembered the other time when the installation didn't go well the computer simply froze (kernel panic). So I assumed it did finish the install. Then I rebooted the computer, hit F8 on my POST screen, selected the Samsung HDD as boot device and I got a new screen, with chamaleon and some other stuff. I chose the chamaleon icon, the system seemed to start booting... and crashed :)

 

Since it was TOO late and I was damn tired I decided to try it again later (that might be tonight). At least I will take a picture of the screen if it doesn't work again. Meanwhile I am downloading the iDeneb v1.6 Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 for Intel/AMD ML, hoping that might be my salvation :(

 

Anytips?

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  • 2 months later...

Hi, I wanted to make this a new topic, but I can't post one...

 

Anyway, I just upgraded my Shuttle S35V2 from 10.5.6 to 10.5.8 using iPc for the original install and the iDeneb combo upgrade. iPc worked fine for 10.5.6, sweet machine. Got the dreaded still waiting for root device error after the upgrade.

 

So I restored all of the old extensions and it then booted into 10.5.8.

 

So my question is, which kext is likely to be the cause? I diffed the two versions and there are changes all over the place. Something is breaking the driver so it can't see the boot volume. Is that JMicronATA? Since there are presumably valuable things in all of the 10.5.8 updates, I don't want everything to be stuck at 10.5.6 kexts. Which are the likely suspects, and I'll try to swap them out one at a time.

 

Thanks

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  • 2 weeks later...

hello!

first of all i m sorry to do my post as a reply to this topic, but i cant see to find the way to post a new topic.

i me trying to install snow leopard 10.6, on my 64bits amd, and when a try to install, i start the pc from the disk, and i get stuck with this "still waiting for root device".

i have no idea what this means or how to solve it...

i m new at this, and without many knowledge of computers at this level...

i made a sucessful instalation on my laptop an acer aspire 5610 with leopard 10.5.2...

at first i tryed to install 10.5.2... on my pc... but i dont know why, it didnt recognize me the disk where i wanted to make the instalation... i have 2 disk... one sata partioned with windows seven, and one ide for media stuff...

and it only recognized the ide... when i go to disk management that disk.. as the indication of "system", dont know why... and maybe it has nothing to do with it...

by not being able to solve this... after searching to several foruns...

i downloaded snow leopard 10.6.1-10.6.2 sse2 sse 3 intel amd by hazard ( just for you to identify what i m trying to install) i burn the disk... launch with -v... and i get stuck on this "still waiting for root device"....

could please someone give me a help...

my pc is an amd athlon 64 x2 dual core 4000+

dont know exactly what to describe so anyone can lend me a hand...

since i have no idea of this stuff...

thanks a lot

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  • 3 weeks later...

I solved a 'still waiting for root device' yesterday by fixing the JMicron SATA driver for osx 10.6.  I think the error generally means OSX can't find the partition it's supposed to boot from.  The reasons why it can't find the partition can be different depending on your system.

 

In my case, I'd actually gotten it to boot a few times and then suddenly I got this error.  I think the reason is because I updated from Chameleon 2 RC1 to RC3 and it seemed to change the order of the disks such that my SATA drive (used as a backup drive) was always disk 0 and the IDE drive I was booting from was disk 2 (with a windows IDE drive as disk 1).  This is why a lot of people recommend you make sure the disk you're booting from is disk 0 to avoid the 'still waiting for root device' error.  You should probably remove every other drive just to make sure it's disk 0.

 

Anyway, after I found a kext to fix the JMicron SATA driver, the system stopped getting stuck trying to read the SATA drive 0 and could find the PATA drive 2 it was supposed to boot from, so no more 'still waiting for root device' error.

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  • 1 month later...
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.

 

 

 

Forgive me if this is the wrong and the wrong place for this but I'm new. I have a similar setup to the above except I cant set up any of my drives as primary master or anything else as far as I know. My first drive in which I have Windows in is a SATA II and is connected to SATA 1 which I guess makes it my primary master second drive an IDE which is for a laptop so there are no jumpers on it to set as master or slave. I guess as you can't really add a second drive to a laptop (unless it's external) the internal drives don't have the jumpers and are masters. I tried disconnecting the SATA II drive no change, I tried disconnecting the IDE drive no change. This waiting for root device is an annoying problem any assistant would be greatly appreciated as I have already installed three different versions of Leopard on an Acer Aspire 5601 and didn't really have any problem on any of the versions. I'm about to give up on this new machine.

AMD Athlon II X2 240+ socket AM3

160GB IDE - Formated

320GB SATA II - Windows partition

3GB DDR2 800 RAM

Nvidia GeForce 6150 SEnForce 430

SRS WOW HD

By the way does it matter what kind of DVDRW you use because mine is a SATA?

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Have installed 3 different versions of Leopard on an Acer Aspire 5600 with no problems at all. Now I have a desktop and I can't get any of my DVD's to even boot in to the installer.

I have a suspicion that it might be because my DVDRW drive is SATA but I really have no idea if this is the case. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

AMD Athlon II X2 240+ socket AM3

160GB IDE - Formated

320GB SATA II - Windows partition

3GB DDR2 800 RAM

Nvidia GeForce 6150 SEnForce 430

SRS WOW HD

 

The IDE drive is an addition I made from my laptop so there is no master or slave jumper on it.

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Hi i have same problem when i try to boot from Kalyway 10.5.2...after while msg seen....

“Still waiting for root device”

My computer bios do NOT have any options for Sata and i am using windows Xp so Add_kext_to_dvd_boot.command cannot be run in windows mode....

 

My system is :

Asus X51R

Operating system : windows XP

Intel Core Duo T2450 2.00 GHz

RAM 2 GB

Ati Radeon Xpress 1100

Realtek HD audio

Hard Disk : 320 GB SATA (Toshiba MK3252GSX)

 

kindly give any solutions or suggestions.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey.

It seems like this root device is troubling pretty much everyone.

Yet, I haven't been able to find a working solution.

I've installed SL by Hazard on Asus F5VL and tried chameleon RC3s and RC4.

 

Diskutil list comand lists my drive where osx is installed as disk0s2 even though my HDD is plugged in Third Master. ( latop design, can't change it to first primary master) and it is the only HDD with only one partition.

 

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you.

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Hey.

It seems like this root device is troubling pretty much everyone.

Yet, I haven't been able to find a working solution.

I've installed SL by Hazard on Asus F5VL and tried chameleon RC3s and RC4.

 

Diskutil list comand lists my drive where osx is installed as disk0s2 even though my HDD is plugged in Third Master. ( latop design, can't change it to first primary master) and it is the only HDD with only one partition.

 

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

 

If your hard disk is not primary it means is not rd=disk0s2...look "o" is disk number and "2" is partition number....

 

rd=diskXsY

 

X is your disk number

 

Y is your partition number

 

so as you told your hard disk is on third master and only one partition use this

 

rd=disk3s1

 

Good Luck

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