Jack Zhou Posted April 18, 2008 Share Posted April 18, 2008 I have an Acer-branded computer (M5640) with a nForce 630i chipset. The motherboard is made by Acer and the BIOS is AMI. I have one SATA Blu-ray/DVDRW drive, one IDE DVDRW drive, one 500GB SATA HDD, and one 120GB IDE HDD. Using the stock SATA Blu-Ray/DVDRW drive, the Kalyway DVD does not even boot. I tried using an IDE DVDRW drive from another machine and it booted. So I suspect it's the SATA/chipset problem. I searched around, and one of the solutions is to enable AHCI for the drive. Unfortunately, my "SATA mode" option in CMOS is greyed-out, locked in RAID mode. A solution to that, I've found, is to change the SATA on the mobo to a so-called "AHCI-enabled" one. Unfortunately, the ports on my mobo are not marked, so I do not know which one is "AHCI-enabled" and which one is not. Another solution, apparently, to solving the "still waiting for root device" problem for HDD is to change the driver. There's an nForce kext on this forum and I saw some success, but I have no idea how to put the kext in the DVD. So my only option (right now, unless the previous two solutions would work with some tweaking) is to use my IDE DVDRW to install. Unfortunately, my power source has only one cord to power an IDE drive (the rest are for SATA drives), so my IDE DVDRW and my IDE HDD cannot simultaneously exist. Therefore I can only install onto my SATA HDD. But the SATA HDD would not boot anyways, so I would have to mirror the drive to my IDE drive (=pain in the ass). So is there a program to do that? (Does Ghost do HFS+?) //edit: the DVD does not recognize my SATA HDD, either, so I'm out of options right now. Thank you in advance for all your help! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100080-sata-problem-install-dvd-hangs-at-still-waiting-for-root-device/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
mkgiver Posted November 14, 2008 Share Posted November 14, 2008 Hi, in the market you can use a "Y" cable that has 1 enter and two cables out so you can install both, the ide and the HDD. second, in ahci shoud boot but depends on the distro some times, try kalyway 10.5.2. good luck! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100080-sata-problem-install-dvd-hangs-at-still-waiting-for-root-device/#findComment-965635 Share on other sites More sharing options...
FabricioN Posted December 7, 2008 Share Posted December 7, 2008 Hello .. i don't know what i have to do... i already try all distributions like XXX, iAtkos, Ideneb.... i always had the same message "still waiting for root device" and i cant load install. please can someone help me?? thank's Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100080-sata-problem-install-dvd-hangs-at-still-waiting-for-root-device/#findComment-990805 Share on other sites More sharing options...
sraisaac Posted December 29, 2008 Share Posted December 29, 2008 I'm not an expert but i've been searching alot on these errors, I'm having that error and the Sam multimedia read or write failed error. From what i've found the whole still waiting for root device has to do with the drive that the OS is trying to install on. By Default it tries to put it on disk0 which would be the first harddrive slot in the bios. So if your like most who have IDE slots and SATA ports your ide slot is going to be 0, 1, SATA, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ect. Some Bios allow these ide ports to be disabled but I don't know if it changes the disk number. Anyways, What you need to do is hit F8 to manually instal and type rd=diskX (X) being the number of the disk your installing the OS on. So if your like me and you have a sata drive and mine happens to be on sata port 5 then you need to type rd=disk5 and hit enter. You may want to try this starting with 0 to however many Harddrives your motherboard supports. If this doesn't work try using a different Distro of the DVD. I believe you have to have the correct and current version of kext on your DVD in a specific directory for your harddrives to even work. Apparently these contain the drivers to get your pc harddrives to work correctly even at installation. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100080-sata-problem-install-dvd-hangs-at-still-waiting-for-root-device/#findComment-1017685 Share on other sites More sharing options...
joesnose Posted December 30, 2008 Share Posted December 30, 2008 sorry to hijack your thread, i always have the waiting for root device problem, though i did manage to install and boot a flat img of tiger. what i would like to ask is how to find out the number of the harddrive and partition in particular, as i already dual boot xp and linux and dont want to overwrite a partition. or will it only write to a osx formatted partition, so are my other partitions safe? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100080-sata-problem-install-dvd-hangs-at-still-waiting-for-root-device/#findComment-1020393 Share on other sites More sharing options...
joesnose Posted January 9, 2009 Share Posted January 9, 2009 Well i have had no success with the rd=diskx, i have a laptop with a ide dvd drive and sata hard drive. Anyone else able to report any success stories? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100080-sata-problem-install-dvd-hangs-at-still-waiting-for-root-device/#findComment-1034021 Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackxp Posted January 11, 2009 Share Posted January 11, 2009 I also had the same problem with loading,it kept on cming up with boot device not found,so I tried hooking up the HDD externally and it WORKED!!! although I will try hooking it back up to the SATA port on my motherboard and hope that it works :pirate2: goodluck to all Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100080-sata-problem-install-dvd-hangs-at-still-waiting-for-root-device/#findComment-1036539 Share on other sites More sharing options...
levyyan Posted March 21, 2009 Share Posted March 21, 2009 I also had the same problem with loading,it kept on cming up with boot device not found,so I tried hooking up the HDD externally and it WORKED!!! although I will try hooking it back up to the SATA port on my motherboard and hope that it works goodluck to all Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100080-sata-problem-install-dvd-hangs-at-still-waiting-for-root-device/#findComment-1112214 Share on other sites More sharing options...
joesnose Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 Using an external dvd drive solved the "still waiting for root device" for me, my laptop has a sata drive with no options in the bios to change the mode on the hard drive. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100080-sata-problem-install-dvd-hangs-at-still-waiting-for-root-device/#findComment-1185134 Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilthyM Posted June 26, 2009 Share Posted June 26, 2009 Using an external dvd drive solved the "still waiting for root device" for me, my laptop has a sata drive with no options in the bios to change the mode on the hard drive. Thanks for the pointer. I'd been trying in vain to get a Compaq Presario C710 to boot and it turned out to be the BIOS was set to SATA mode = Disable, despite the fact that it only supports SATA drives. Anyway, enabled SATA and up she came. Awesome! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100080-sata-problem-install-dvd-hangs-at-still-waiting-for-root-device/#findComment-1186633 Share on other sites More sharing options...
envy1985 Posted July 30, 2009 Share Posted July 30, 2009 Thanks for the pointer. I'd been trying in vain to get a Compaq Presario C710 to boot and it turned out to be the BIOS was set to SATA mode = Disable, despite the fact that it only supports SATA drives. Anyway, enabled SATA and up she came. Awesome! How did you enable that in the Compaq BIOS? Wasnt you running the crappy 'simple' BIOS which doesnt allow to do anything... Because im running that Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/100080-sata-problem-install-dvd-hangs-at-still-waiting-for-root-device/#findComment-1213416 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts