First off I'm a total bsd noob. I'm using a *buntu variant as my main OS, and I decided to give FreeBSD a go. So I downloaded the install-cd iso, burned it, popped into my spare machine (P4 Duo, 2 GB ram, 250 GB HD), went through the installation process, made sure I did everything to standard requirements, rebooted anxiously waiting for the boot messages to pop up... nothing. Just a blinking cursor dropping about 3 lines and just sitting there, blinking as if it's laughing at me. I reinstalled again and again, made changes to partitions (left out swap, made sure that boot and root are on top of everything else, searched around the web for hints and solutions such as setting the HD first in the boot list, etc., even turned off ACPI.. nothing. Same lonely cursor on black screen mocking me all the time, every. time. Can someone, anyone help me out with this?

PS: I converted the drive from MBR to GPT using gdisk because I have about 56GB of data on this machine that I DON'T want to destroy. Could this perhaps be what causes the problem?

Anyone? No? Please don't let me hang like this...

I have only installed FreeBSD 3 times and always boots to the command line. So I have never seem the problem you are describing. But perhaps our friends from the FreeBSD forums can help you a little bit more with that issue.
Here is the link http://forums.freebsd.org/

Good luck to you.