Raspberry pi 3 model B not booting

[Cjay13]

Hi everyone,
I recently bought a raspberry pi 3 and I'm trying to install raspbian with no success. I tried using noobs but the board doesn't boot. Only the red led is on. When I flash raspbian with etcher the board boots but gets stuck and Kernel panic-not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(179,2) comes up.

I tried 2 sd cards I'm currently using 16GB sandisk sd card and 5V 2A mobile charger to supply power.
I have tried many solutions in the forum but none of them worked. Please help me out.

Thanks

[wh7qq]

First of all, are you speaking of the older 3B or the newer 3B+? The differences are significant in that the 3B+ requires a heavier power supply and your 2 amp phone charger might not have sufficient juice to start the 3B+. Phone chargers, in general, may not be sufficiently well regulated to power an RPi as they expect to see a LiPo battery to charge and smooth out their power delivery (but possibly below the RPi threshold voltage). You are well advised to spend a few extra bucks and get a 2.5 amp supply expressly built for the 3B+ from an authorized RPi dealer such as Adafruit. They also run an unloaded voltage slightly greater than 5.0 to be sure that accessories don't drop the voltage below the threshold. Phone chargers may have thin wires with excessive voltage drop for the RPi at the higher currents required.

The RPi models have a slightly different appearance. The 3B is pictured here:https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/ra ... 3-model-b/ and the 3B+ is shown here https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/

Second, the speed of the SanDisk uSD card: is it class 10 or better? Older cards may not be fast enough. Also, is it genuine and "good"? The free windows utility "h2testw" or Linux "f3write/f3read" take some time and overwrite your card but they will tell you if it is a good card or a counterfeit. Counterfeit cards often have sizes that are substantially below what is specified. You will then have to re-flash the OS with Etcher.

Be sure you have downloaded the correct OS: "Raspbian Stretch with desktop" (forget Noobs) from https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

Did you verify the sha256 sum of the downloaded .zip file against what is published on the Downloads page?. Does Etcher complete and validate without error?

[LTolledo]

Psst..... get a proper RPF recommended 5v 2.5A PSU (not mobile phone charger), and post back in the morning after....

[HawaiianPi]

... I'm currently using 16GB sandisk sd card and 5V 2A mobile charger to supply power.
I have tried many solutions in the forum but none of them worked. Please help me out.

You apparently haven't tried the solution of using a proper power supply.

The recommended power supply for the Pi3 is 5V/2.5A, and phone chargers are not recommended.

Phone chargers often don't have good voltage regulation and will not maintain a stable 5V under load. I have a 5V/2.4A charger that dips well below 5V at only a 1A load. It charges my phone fine (most phones only need a little over 4.2V to charge), but it's a lousy Pi power supply. Also, if your phone charger uses a separate micro USB cable, the cable could be an additional problem. Many standard micro USB 2.0 cables can't deliver much more than 500mA (0.5A) without voltage loss.

The official Raspberry Pi Universal Power Supply is often recommended here because it is affordable and a proven performer.