Still waiting for root device

[Badie05]

Q: When I try to install OSx86, I get the message "Still waiting for root device."

 

A: OSx86 is not seeing your optical drive. If the drive is IDE, make SURE it is on the IDE port that goes to your southbridge (usually the blue one, but it varies), NOT on any supplementary IDE controllers. If your disk is PATA (classic IDE), make sure the DVDrom is connected in the Slave port anche the Disk in the Master port in the same IDE channel. If it is SATA, set your bios settings to emulate or compatibility or something like that, NOT native or RAID or AHCI. Note: After changing the sata mode, if you also run windows off of the same/another HD on this controller, you may notice degraded performance and/or faliure to boot windows IF you change the sata settings.

 

If you mean boot instead of install, just replace the phrase "optical drive" with hard drive, the rest still applies. It is a detection issue with your IDE/SATA controller. Also you have to check that The Hard Disk is on the same ATA cable as the optical drive (in my case a DL DVD recorder).

 

Edit: Try to use a different DVD drive when installing. I kept getting "Still waiting for root device" then I swapped in a different dvd drive and it booted like normal!

 

Edit: Try deleting the ApplePS2controller.kext - I get rid of that and it boots up for me no problem then!

 

EDIT: If you have an Ati Xpress200m Chipset, you must use scousi's Ati ATA kext..HERE

 

Edit: After installing OSX86 and this error appears, try typing rd=disk0s1 at the Darwin bootloader (or whichever disk partition you used when setting up OSX86 - for example rd=disk0s3 if partition 3 on disk 0 (IDE Primary Master) was used) - the kernel is otherwise trying to find a boot partition by UUID - see http://neonkoala.co.uk/content/view/33/34/

 

In my case its intel ggc101 Mb with ati southbridge and ati 200 vga initially hdd(pata) on primary channel as a master and sony dvdrw on secondary master gave the error msg "still waiting for root drive". i changed hdd to secondary master and dvdrw to primary master and it solved the problem. it finally installed installation took more than eight hours on 2.8 ghz dual core with one gb Ram.but it installed.performance is ok but not enough.it is like xp on p3 mechine. (os x 10.4.8 jas)

 

How would I do this. Can I have the most Noob friendly steps on how to fix this error. What to do. Suggestions. Thanks a lot. My optical drive it the TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-H653L

[Badie05]

Anyone wanna help (BUMP)