My mother’s laptop started displaying an alarming message:
(3.347276) Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown block (0, 0)
The good news is that this seemingly terminal problem has proved easy to fix (so far anyway 😉 ).
- Hold Down the Shift key when booting to see the GRUB menu displayed
- Press the Escape key to get to the menu
- Select a different kernel to boot into instead of the one that has been panicking
- Do whatever needs to be done as per [SOLVED} kernel panic-not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown block(0,0)
In my case, I removed numerous kernels (Note – leave a couple behind including the two most recent)
sudo apt-get remove linux-image ...
sudo apt-get autoremove
and was advised by the terminal to run
sudo dpkg --configure -a