I've been trying to install FreeBSD on a second computer of mine for a couple days and no matter what I do it gives me this as soon as I start installing:

Write failure on Transfer! (wrote -1 bytes of 1457152 bytes)

then I press ok and it says:

Unable to transfer base distribution from acd0
Do you want to try to retrieve again?


It just loops, every package it tries to install comes up with this.

I have a 40 gig HD that shouldn't have anything on it, I deleted the partition, then set the auto partitions in the installer. My systems specs are as follows:

ECS mobo
AMD 1600+ (Had to underclock it just to get BSD to boot)
256MB PC3200 ram
NVIDIA FX 5200 Ultra
40 GB Maxtor HD
32x CDROM

I tried installing linux on it just to see if it would work and it installs fine, but then as soon as it boots up the monitor turns off, then about every other minute it flicks on (to a blank black screen) then off again. I know the hardware is good cause I just took XP off of it and everything was fine. Any ideas? I really wanted to try and learn Unix, and rather not go with Linux...maybe I'm doomed to Wind0ze the rest of my life

Next time you try it... press alt-f2 and look at the debugging information... it will tell you what happened. With that information we can help a little more.

looks like the errors are checksum errors:

/stand/cpio:invalid header: checksum error
/stand/cpio:warning: skipped 113 bytes of junk
./lib/libsbuf.so.2
./lib/libsbuf.so.4

etc, etc, it just says this over and over with different file names...bad media? I've tried two different CDs that I've downloaded from FreeBSD.org, bad ram maybe?

it also says at the end:

/stand/gunzip:<fd:0>: invalid distance code
/stand/cpio:Premature end of file

any ideas? Thanks for your help btw.

Hmm, I am sure that if you downloaded two images at least one would be correct. It could be some faulty ram. Have you tried to download the images from the ftp sites (those would definitly be correct)?

Sorry I don't know what else to try.

I downloaded (only once) the two ISOs from the FreeBSD.org ftp site, burned two copies of the disc because the first didn't work. I guess I will try downloading them again...man, maybe I'll just put xp back on =/

thanks for your help tho, much appreciated.