[Ubuntu] HP dc7700 Kernel Panic

[somabc]

I'm trying to install Ubuntu Linux 9.04 64bit on an HP dc7700. Whenever I boot any kind of linux from USB/CD/PXE I get this

kernel panic not syncing VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,1)

Apologies for the wonky picture.

I have tried Redhat, Fedora and Ubuntu but all have the same message. The machine previously had Fedora 11 so it is definitely capable of booting properly.

Has anyone any ideas?

[fintang]

Have a look in your BIOS and change settings there.

Happned to me i turned the "sata mode" in bios from "ahci" to "raid" and then it works.. Just dont ask why though.

some times i386 (32bit) version of ubuntu works better than 64 bit so give that one a try.

[somabc]

The only SATA choices I have are IDE and RAID, if it is switched to RAID then no HD's are detected at all

[Arcath]

Have you tried it without the HDD in, just to confirm that it is infact the HDD its having proglems with

[freak]

Something's definately not right, it looks like it's trying to boot from the first partition on the eigth hard drive (unknown-block(8,1)) which I doubt is correct!

I'm surprised that Fintang's suggestion didn't work as it usually solves this problem. What motherboard do you have?

It may be that the hard drive it's self is screwed up. Try getting into rescue mode or booting from a live cd and running fsck or e2fsck on the hard drive. Watch out for bad sectors.

Or maybe Grub is misconfigured? Can you show us your grub.conf file? (boot/grub/grub.conf) Your partition layout would also be handy

And in case it helps, here's a million other people with the same problem with various solutions: Ubuntu Forums

[somabc]

OK have been on the phone to HP and tested the HD and no hardware faults are found. I have tried 32 bit Ubuntu and that detects the HD straight away, no kernel panics. I have updated the BIOS to the latest version and reset to the factory defaults. The BIOS drive settings are on IDE, I was expecting there to be an AHCI option too?

The drive is blank just now, no partitions, with a windows MBR.

[freak]

In that case, try booting with some parameters such as:

acpi=off noapic nolapic pci=noacpi

If that works, try removing some to pinpoint which one works (probably acpi=off)

If it doesn't, try with these parameters:

pnpbios pci=biosirq pci=usepirqmask

I recall having a problem like this once with a 64 bit distro. I resorted to 32 bit in the end.

Edit: When you install, where do you install the boot loader?