I have a Hitachi Deskstar 500GB hard drive that was running Crunchbang Linux. I decided to give PCBSD 8.1 a try. The installation seemed to be going normally. I clicked for the BSD loader (GRUB) to be installed. When it was time to re-boot, the computer couldn't complete BIOS self-check and give me the friendly beep that everything is fine. The computer was unable to start until I unplugged the Deskstar. I attempted to run Knoppix, but the computer would not progress in the start process enough to allow a start for CD. The motherboard is programmed to allow initial boot from CD first, then the hard drive. Is there any way to erase the Deskstar for re-use? Or, is it possible PCBSD erased the first sector of the hard drive making it impossible for BIOS to see it and continue with the boot sequence? Is it possible for the BIOS to have been adversely affected by the PCBSD loader or start link? The awkwardness of this thread is because I am 60 years old and have not been computing for a very long time. I know that younger people are further advance in computing than I am. I am willing to trash the hard drive, but I would like to understand what went wrong, so I can learn from my mistakes. Thank you for your time.

Start What? Is there a internal Operating system that boots when you unplug the external Hardrive?

Are you saying that the cd of Knoppix would not even show the penguin in top left of screen saying OK loading the kernel. Usually for computer checks. I find that Puppy 4.31 or Puppy 4.12 boots up on most
anything.

If you can get Puppy to boot first. Then plug in you external drive to USB. Then use Pmount in Puppy to mount the drive. You can look inside to see what is going on. I am not a BSD user. There are some BSD users on the forum that
will answer your BSD questions better than I.

After mounting the drive and looking inside to save whatever important files you ay wish to keep to USB. You can unmount the Hitachi. Open Gparted Next. And delete every partition on the drive. Then reformat the whole drive to whatever file system you wish. Which will make it pristine again (blank).

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I'm sorry I didn't explain the situation well enough. I had two hard drives mounted inside the computer. Both were 500GB hard drives. Sda had Ubuntu Linux on it. Sdb had Crunchbang Linux on it. I was erasing sdb and dedicating the whole drive to PCBSD. I checked off to have the PCBSD boot loader installed. There was no other operating systems on the computer hard drives other than Ubuntu and Crunchbang. I was getting rid of Crunchbang to try PCBSD. When it was time to reboot, I was prepared to see that PCBSD was the only system available, but I was willing to work with a shell to have Ubuntu added to GRUB or whatever loader PCBSD used. I cannot run Knoppix or Puppy with the bad hard drive plugged into the motherboard and powered up. BIOS does not complete it's start-up sequence. I don't hear the little beep that tells me the BIOS is finished with the self-check sequence and checking the hardware etc. I imagine that means that the chain loader can't work. When I take the bad hard drive out of the computer, the computer will start and run Ubuntu like it should. I thank you for your help in this matter.

If you unplug the ubuntu drive and try to boot with the bsd drive will it? If so add the lines in ubuntus grub to allow bsd to boot also.

If not unplug the ubuntu drive so you dont trash it, plug in the bsd drive, boot with the BSD install DVD and fix the boot record on the BSD drive. I would choose not to install a boot loader on the bsd drive. Once you get the BSD drive running...

I would put the drives back in, make the linux drive the boot drive, add the lines to linux's grub to allow booting BSD. Let grub do it, not BSD's loader. I've never used PC BSD. You can also use BSD's loader to load linux. Use grub it's easier.

Another option would be to use a second party boot loader like.
http://gag.sourceforge.net/

Get both operating systems to work then worry about a boot loader.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...ook/index.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...ysinstall.html
http://forums.freebsd.org/

Thank you for what you wrote regarding my situation. I did try to use the install DVD for PCBSD to rescue the system, but BIOS didn't allow the DVD to start. At this point I think that the problem may be the motherboard for some reason and it was coincidental that it happened when I was trying to install PCBSD. I have a spare Intel motherboard that I will be installing tomorrow. I will if I can install PCBSD in a 100GB hard drive to make sure that it isn't the installation media. If it's not, I should be able to boot from the DVD and rescue the hard drive like you suggest. I truly appreciate your post and I thank you very much. I will post what happened after tomorrow. Thank you once again.

The BIOS does not know the dvd drive is there?

What kind of drive is it? Pata or Sata?
If it's Sata you may have changed the way the BIOS looks for it. (AHCI mode?)

If you can't boot from the DVD drive now then you probably changed the BIOS settings for it. Or the drive took a dump. Does the DVD drive work at all? Do you have the BIOS set for AHCI for a sata drive?

Find out why you can't boot from your optical drive.

Thank you for your response. The dvd player/burner drive does run. When I wrote that the BIOS does not allow the dvd to start, I meant that it is not booting from the dvd. The green light comes on the dvd player but this is as far as it goes. Later today I am installing the spare motherboard into the computer. The installation should be complete tomorrow. They just switched my work hours to 8pm to 5:30am which complicates things. I am 60 years old and making these types of adjustments are difficult. I will post what happens next. Your concern and help is really appreciated. Thank you.

Ok good luck to you.
Your just south of what I call the mess. Anything north of I80. Anything north of Manteno or Peotone really.

The problem is in the motherboard. Having found the receipt, I found out that I had bought a low-end motherboard/processor combo. It was never meant to be a long term investment. I truly used the heck out of the computer installing one system after another. Because I never ran FreeBSD or PC-BSD, I decided to give it a try. Because there is a learning curve involved with even PC-BSD, I want to run it. I ordered another motherboard, processor, and hard drive. I have everything else needed. I'll be running PC-BSD soon. I'm waiting for the hardware delivery. Thanks for your help and humor. I was south.