I've got an Athlon 64, 2.6GHz, 4GB, 512MB ATI card, MSI mobo, and when I try to boot it, it always locks up. It won't get through the GUI install. I forgot where it hangs. But today, I tried the text VESA option, and it opens that black window, prints nothing on the screen, and is locked up. I tried the text install also. It got to this message before locking up:
BTW, Solaris 11.2 seems to work fine on this cpu, expect for perhaps CUPS.

After that, the only way I can get control of the computer is to pull the plug or reach around back and switch off the power supply. If I try to reboot, it acts so screwy, that I can't get the optical drive to open so I can eject the disc and boot something else. PC-BSD so freaks out my computer that I cannot boot from USB, the DVD won't boot after I press the reset button. I can only pull the plug.

I've searched here to no avail, and I've looked in the manual. It says unplug devices to see what is the problem. So if I unplug my keyb, mouse, and monitor, how will it work? I do have 2 mice plugged in - a PS/2 and USB, so I unplugged the USB. Still nothing good. I find this strange because I used to have an old Dell desktop that ran PC-BSD 1.x fine. I re-burned the DVD at only 3x, but it still doesn't work.

What should I start looking for? Thanks,
gentisle

Did you test download md5/shal?

Are you using best quality dvd disc?

Burning at the very slowest speed possible?

Try the server version, try the older version, try booting to usb. (will have to create one)

May have to set bios settings to failsafe or default too. Be sure other settings don't change in bios.

jefro:
Yes, when I download, usually, I use DownloadThemAll, and paste the checksum in so it can verify the downloaded image. I re-checked and sha256 verifies. I have some DVDs from Office Depot. They are 16X, but I've never tried that speed because I don't think the system will burn correctly at that speed. I could try burning at 1x. I don't overclock though the mobo will allow it. Is there a way to sha256 the DVD I burned to verify that the image is correctly burned to disc? I've seen some linux distros that would check the disc from the boot menu. I like to solve these problems myself, but sometimes that's difficult when you don't have a frame of reference for the subject you're trying to learn. Thanks for your help.

Burn disks always at the slowest speed.

Also, check your system requirements against the PC-BSD hardware compatibility list. You have a very similar PC to me except for the motherboard. Which chipset does it use?

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If you can burn at 1x then try.

If your distro can't check on boot then a round about way is to burn and then make an iso and check that it results in same as original iso.

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Well, I tried the USB w/Win32 Disk Imager, and that booted and started to install (after selecting the disk). But had an error which I looked at, and it was complaining about the disk GPT partition or something. It asked if I wanted to save a log file, and I clicked yes. I inserted another USB stick, and it wrote the log file to the boot USB stick. So that one was lost. I'm starting to think there is something wrong w/the burner, because I recently downloaded Win10 preview, burned it, and neither 10074 or 10130 would work. Still the USB should work. I think I'll try to boot OpenBSD and NetBSD and FreeBSD to see what will happen.

As far as HCL is concerned, I looked at the FreeBSD HCL, and didn't see anything that looked like my hardware would NOT work. And since Solaris 11.2 works, I figured I should be good to go. Guess that's not always the case. But to answer your question, the chipset is nVidia nForce 570 SLI. This is NOT the video card which is ATI. I WISH I had an nVidia video card.

Try FreeBSD and ensure that you install to a mbr partition rather than a gpt.

cynwulf:

Will do. I thought that I read in the manual that PC-BSD wanted GPT parts.

If the only OS you have installed is BSD or Linux, then yes, GPT is recommended.

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GPT can crap out on some old motherboards/BIOSs so it's best to avoid it on older hardware unless you're certain it's fully supported. I've had disks resulting from a FreeBSD 9.x/10.x install which actually caused the BIOS on an old socket 775 P4 motherboard to freeze and had to be plugged into a different machine and dd'd before they could be reattached.

Plus OpenBSD does not have any GPT support at all and seems to work ok...

True. I have seen very few modern systems have an issue with GPT. Any PC or motherboard made after 2008 should be generally GPT friendly, otherwise use MBR.

Kind of surprised OpenBSD has no GPT support considering most systems are moving away from BIOS and MBR setups.

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It's a work in progress - with OpenBSD especially things only get done if someone steps up and works on them.

http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=artic...20150413163333

For *BSD systems I'm unsure of the real advantages of GPT. Linux installs to the DOS mbr partition(s) and uses the limited primary/extended partitions.

On x86 hardware, OpenBSD uses an mbr and one primary (usually partition 4) as a "container" for it's own partition record - disklabel(8).

See the section on larger than 2TB drives:
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#LargeDrive

UEFI still allows use of "legacy" mbr as well, so while I'm sure there are advantages I'm unaware of, there's not exactly a pressing need. (also consider that OpenBSD and NetBSD support many architectures and not focus specifically on x86, as is the case with FreeBSD.

OK, so I've tried a few things and I'm giving up the idea of putting PC-BSD or FreeBSD on this system. Apparently, there's some issue(s) w/this mobo.

I tried FreeeBSD 10.1 and it gave some zfs related error. I either didn't write that one down, or lost it.

I eliminated the DVD problem by putting PC-BSD on a USB stick, and the installer got to the point of preparing the HDD and crapped out w/the error: "EXITERROR: Error 139 zpool create -d -o feature@async_destroy=enabled -o f. Maybe that was the freebsd error. Anyway, PC-BSD would not install either.

I'm thinking it's easier w/Intel motherboards since I used to have an old Dell w/Intel and PC-BSD installed w/o any hitches.

I supposed there could be something wrong with the HDD I'm trying to install to. Win10 would not install either. Though the Western Digital DLG software says the HDD is fine, I suspect there is something wrong w/it b/c I had LinuxMint on it earlier, and it was making funny noises. So perhaps it will die soon, and that will verify my suspicions.

Anyway, Solaris 11.2 runs OK, except for the CUPS problem I'm dealing w/, but that's another question on the other forum. Thanks everyone.

It looks like you were trying to install with / on ZFS? Probably with GPT. Why not just install to a standard mbr and use UFS?

If you install for ZFS, the FreeBSD installer should give you a guided setup.