But the lapic rootdelay=10 is a good tip...as soon as I have finished the real work I am doing here I will give that a go.
I tried "append = "rootdelay=10" in the image section but noticed no delay in boot up and it still failed. Should there be a noticeable delay?
Yep, it should just sit there for 10s before saying "mounting root filesystem"
HTH
Chris