I received a setuproot failed error when trying to boot off a custom 3.7 kernel on CentOS 5.9. Turns out CentOS 5 is getting long in the tooth and needs a hand with kernel settings.
Anyway, this is my error in VMWare.
setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory
no fstab.sys, mounting internal defaults..
error mounting.etc etc etc.
To fix, configure your kernel with:
CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED=y
CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED_V2=y