From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jan 17 20:01:14 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6EB3916A4CE for ; Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:01:14 +0000 (GMT) Received: from anarchy.primalinsanity.com (anarchy.primalinsanity.com [207.44.197.147]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 232BA43D4C for ; Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:01:14 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from villain@anarchy.primalinsanity.com) Received: from anarchy.primalinsanity.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by anarchy.primalinsanity.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2179223500 for ; Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:01:09 +0000 (GMT) Received: (from villain@localhost) by anarchy.primalinsanity.com (8.13.1/8.13.0/Submit) id j0HK15nS024872 for questions@freebsd.org; Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:01:05 GMT Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:01:04 +0000 From: villain To: questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20050117200104.GA17454@anarchy.primalinsanity.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i Subject: Booting Process: Something real funny happening X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:01:14 -0000 Hello. I've been trying to install FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE (miniinst.iso) on this HP Compaq DC7100 for a few months now. But the thing is, FreeBSD just won't boot! I've been searching help for this high and low, in HP forums as well as other BSD forums, with little luck. I'm installing this on a 150GB S-ATA harddrive, and the installation goes just fine. I've tried with the FreeBSD bootloader (BootMgr) as well as with the standard MBR, but the result is the same: either I press F1 to boot to FreeBSD or my machine goes through this step automatically. And what happens next? Nothing. The computer reboots, and does the same, over and over again. That's about it. And I've tried many things: 1) Playing with the BIOS setup, disabling ACPI and DMA settings, as well as looking for places to 'add a UNIX OS' but there are none. 2) Tried booting to my harddrive from the installation CD-ROM, by going to option 6: Escape to loader prompt. I did a lsdev and was returned: cd devices: cd0: Device 0x0 disk devices: disk0: BIOS drive A: disk1: BIOS drive C: disk1s1: Unknown fs: 0x7 disk2: BIOS drive D: disk2s1a: FFS disk2s1b: swap disk2s1d: FFS disk2s1e: FFS disk2s1f: FFS Booting like this "boot disk2s1a:/boot/kernel" is the only thing this loader prompt boots to, but that boots me to the installation CD-ROM :( I actually have two harddrives. One is ad4 (believed in this case to be the C: and the other is ad6 (the one I have Windows installed on), both are S-ATA. Since I have a clean MBR I'm taken directly to Windows every time. People have asked me to be more verbose on this issue, but this is as deep as I can possibly take you! All the best, Johann