I installed a new 500GB, 7200RPM drive into the HP Mini 110 netbook and proceeded to install Snow Leopard on it.

Upon booting from the USB drive (made with Netbook Installer), I received an error on the apple loading screen (the ‘do not enter / no smoking’ symbol appeared).  I restarted the computer and went into the boot options of the USB drive and selected verbose from the menu (use the up/down arrows to see the menu).

Upon booting verbosely, I saw the Still Waiting for Root Device message.  After googling that message, it appeared that the error was common in the OSX86 world and was not usually easy to fix.  Many different people having many different experiences with it.  Some easily fixed, some not fixable.

To fix, I restarted the PC again and went into BIOS setup, changed the boot options to have the USB drive first in the list and the HDD second.  It seems that whenever this error came up, switching the boot order resolved it.  It didn’t really matter which drive was listed first, as long as you change it and save/exit the BIOS.

After I made that simple change, the Still Waiting for Root Device message went away and installation proceeded as it normally would.

System:
Model:  HP Mini 110-1000
RAM:  1GB
HDD:  Seagate Momentus 2.5″ SATA 500GB (7200rpm)
OS:  Mac OSX (Snow Leopard 10.6.1)