VFS: cannot open root device “hda” or unknown-block(0,0)

If you compiled the Linux kernel and when you boot your new image, appeared following problem:

VFS: Cannot open root device “hda” or unknown-block(0,0)

Please append a correct “root=” boot option; here are the available partitions

Kernel panic

This problem is caused by fault initrd.img file or any problem in it, because when kernel start its boot, it need some drivers that are provided by initrd.img file, such as filesystem, block devices, IDE devices, so the Linux need this file to start correctly.

A way that I find to solve this problem was to set (File System, Devices Drivers –> Block Devices, Devices Drivers –> ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support) like as default .config generated by make defconfig command. In this file, the essential drivers (showed up) are configured like as [y] (built-in) not [m]. Pictures with these configurations are showed below:

File System entry:

Devices Drivers –> Block Devices

Devices Drivers –> ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support

When I was look for solution to this problem, I saw in some foruns that people had the same problem but it happened in grub bootloader, and they got a solution changing the configuration file of grub. So case you followed the steps above that I described, can be a grub configuration problem.