aeroz Posted October 8, 2006 Share Posted October 8, 2006 Hi, I've installed OS X on a partition through VMware. The reason I could not boot the install natively is because I got the "still waiting for root device" error, so Rammjet recommended the guide for installing through VM. I made sure to install OS X on the physical disk and not on a VM virtual disk. Also, I can load OS X smoothly in VM and I can see the two partitions I have on my desktop (one for Mac and one for Windows), so I know I installed it correctly on the disk. The problem is, I can't boot natively for the same reason... "still waiting for root device." If it works on VM without the error, what could be causing it to happen natively? I know my laptop's configuration is tricky because I can't change the jumper settings, but others who have the same model and similar ones have managed to install without this error even with their slave/master settings like mine. I have an hp dv5000 and I installed JaS's 10.4.6 with all the correct AMD patches. Could anyone point me in the right direction to getting into OS X natively? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aeroz Posted October 8, 2006 Author Share Posted October 8, 2006 Perhaps this will help-- I noticed in verbose mode that when I boot in VM, I don't see one line that I see when booting natively. It's the last line I see before the error. FireWire (OHCI) TI ID 8032 PCI now active. GUID 633f02006e3d417d; max speed s400. Still waiting for root device Maybe I should disable FireWire so that it doesn't need to connect with it as a root device or something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aeroz Posted October 9, 2006 Author Share Posted October 9, 2006 Another idea: Can anyone tell me any ways to skip the detection of whatever causes the "still waiting for root device" error? I have the OS installed just fine, so how can I not boot into it natively? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rammjet Posted October 9, 2006 Share Posted October 9, 2006 Can anyone tell me any ways to skip the detection of whatever causes the "still waiting for root device" error? It isn't a detection thing. It is a communication thing. It is waiting for communication from the device with the OS it wants to boot, but it isn't getting that communication. There is nothing to skip. But I think I know the problem and you're not going to like it. You have a SATA hard drive and I bet OSX doesn't have a driver for the SATA controller chip in your computer. When you install from VMWare, you are using a simulated computer that makes use of the Windows drivers. So VMWare communicates with the hard drive with no problem. When you try to boot natively or try to boot using the DVD as a bootloader, you get the root device error because OSX doesn't have a driver to communicate with the hard drive. BIOS in your computer intitiates the boot process by reading files on the boot sectors. It starts running these programs in memory and then hands them off to OSX. OSX takes the reins and waits for data coming from the hard drive. But the data never comes because OSX cannot read anything coming from the SATA hard drive. Thus, waiting for root device. OSX only has drivers for Intel and VIA SATA controller chips. If your computer uses a different one, game over. Doing some Googling, I only get hints that the SATA controller is either ATI or Intel. If ATI, then game over. If Intel, might work. Go into BIOS and see if you can set SATA for compatibility mode or for ATA mode, anything but AHCI mode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lord_muad_dib Posted October 9, 2006 Share Posted October 9, 2006 no pc specs no help Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aeroz Posted October 10, 2006 Author Share Posted October 10, 2006 Rammjet: Thanks so much, but the dv5000 has two models. One has SATA, and one has PATA. I have the PATA version. Here are my specs: HP Pavilion dv5000z Processor: 2.0 GHz AMD Turion 64 ML-37 (SSE3 compatible) Hard Drive: 80 GB PATA Motherboard Chipset: ATI Xpress 200 Motherboard Southbridge: ATI SB400 GPU: ATI RADEON Xpress 200M And as I said, others with this model have gotten OS X to work somehow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rammjet Posted October 10, 2006 Share Posted October 10, 2006 If you look at the OSX partition from Windows, what do you see there? Also: boot the install DVD and go to Terminal in the Utilities menu. In Terminal, type: diskutil list Find the entry for your OSX partition. In the type column, does it say "Apple_HFS"? Verify the name of your OSX partition in the center column. Now type the following commands: cd "/Volumes/(the-name-of-your-OSX-partition)" <--only need the quotes if the name has spaces ls What do you see there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aeroz Posted October 10, 2006 Author Share Posted October 10, 2006 From the Disk Manager in Windows I see the partition is 100% free, but everything indicates that I installed on the physical disk and NOT on a virtual disk... In Terminal, the type is Apple_HFS. The command ls shows: .DS_Store Desktop DB System dev private .Spotlight-V100 Desktop DF Users etc sbin .Trashes Developer Volumes mach tmp .vol Library bin mach.sym usr Applications Network cores mach_kernel var The System Profiler doesn't show my real hard drive... only a "virtual IDE". Although it appears Disk Utility also shows my disk as "virtual IDE" even with the Windows partition, so I suppose that's OK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rammjet Posted October 10, 2006 Share Posted October 10, 2006 When you ran Terminal and did "diskutil list" and the "ls" command, you did that when you booted the install DVD and opened Terminal, right? WRONG, because you can't boot to the installer on the DVD. So, you ran those commands from inside VMWare and saw what VMWare saw. We need data from outside VMWare. I'm still not convinced that OSX is installed natively on that partition. It might be you placed the virtual disk file there. And "diskutil list" reported the format of the virtual disk file as HFS+. We really need to look at the OSX partition from Windows. When I asked above, I wanted you to use Windows Explorer (My Computer -> E: or F: or whatever) to access the partition and look for any files it might see. Windows cannot see an HFS+ formatted partition. So, if it is really formatted as HFS+, Windows won't see anything. But if it hasn't been formatted, then Windows might see some file or files on the partition. If the partition is really formatted as HFS+, you need to use TransMac ( http://www.asy.com/ ) or MacDrive ( http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/ ) to read the HFS+ partition. However, if you have ever installed Alcohol in Windows, there is a component that interferes with the operation of MacDrive. Simply removing Alcohol is not enough - the component has to be tracked down and removed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aeroz Posted October 10, 2006 Author Share Posted October 10, 2006 I can't view the OS X partition from Windows because there is no drive letter associated with it. Furthermore, I can't find any way to view the Mac partition. So I'm going to try the install again, and this time with a drive letter so I can monitor it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSX86 Noob Posted October 17, 2006 Share Posted October 17, 2006 good conversation.. learned a lot from it. And I think I'm having the same problem too. It works totally fine in VMWare.. but not natively. The lines showed that it stopped at: Waiting on <dict ID="0"><key>IOProviderCLasss</key>..............boot_uuid_media</string></dict> I've hopped into the bios and tried all the settings for regarding SATA as IDE/RAID/AHCI.. None of them work, all of them stop at that line. Nor could I boot from the DVD. But mine's an Intel MB.. shouldn't its SATA be working? Please advice on the reasoning and solution. thanks!! My Config.: MB: Intel DQ965GF (w/ on board display/sound/LAN) CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86GHz) RAM: Samsung 512Mb x 2 @ 533 (Dual channel) HD: Western Digital 320Gb KS (runs on SATA-II) Using MacOSX 10.4.7 - repack by JaS. Please also refer to this discussion thread: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=30472 Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverZero Posted October 19, 2006 Share Posted October 19, 2006 Seeing so many similar problems (I'm having the same), it's gotta be an issue with OSX not being able to access the SATA drive / partition at boot-up. Like Rammjet said, VMWare can bypass SATA issues by using virtualization, but you don't have that luxury when booting natively. I'm working full-time to figure this out, so I hope I can offer some more advice soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSX86 Noob Posted October 19, 2006 Share Posted October 19, 2006 Seeing so many similar problems (I'm having the same), it's gotta be an issue with OSX not being able to access the SATA drive / partition at boot-up. Like Rammjet said, VMWare can bypass SATA issues by using virtualization, but you don't have that luxury when booting natively. I'm working full-time to figure this out, so I hope I can offer some more advice soon. Thank you SilverZero! Look forward to reading your report soon. Good luck, Leo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aeroz Posted October 22, 2006 Author Share Posted October 22, 2006 But this is an ATA issue as well as SATA, since I'm not using SATA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Altece Posted November 9, 2007 Share Posted November 9, 2007 Perhaps this will help-- I noticed in verbose mode that when I boot in VM, I don't see one line that I see when booting natively. It's the last line I see before the error. FireWire (OHCI) TI ID 8032 PCI now active. GUID 633f02006e3d417d; max speed s400.<BR>Still waiting for root device Maybe I should disable FireWire so that it doesn't need to connect with it as a root device or something? I have the EXACT same error. I have an HP Pavilion dv8000 laptop. What should I do? BTW, I would need step-by-step instructions because I have never played with the bios(if this is bios related). HELP!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts