Live system does not boot

[bergschreck]

I tried if PC-BSD supports my hardware (Toshiba Satellite Pro A200).

1. try: using USB-Live 32 bit. On boot it stucks with a black screen showing only "|".

2. try: using Live DVD 32 bit. It prints:

CD Loader 1.2

Building the boot loader arguments
Looking up /BOOT/LOADER... Found
Relocating the loader and the BTX
Starting the BTX loader

BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.02
Consoles: internal video/keyboard
BIOS CD is cd0
BIOS drive A: is disk0
BIOS drive C: is disk1

Thats's all. Then it hangs.

Thats' sad. Looks like I have to stay with Linux.

[Cobalt]

Did you check the MD5 sum on the images? I would use the regular install DVD for maximum compatibility.

[bergschreck]

Yes, MD5 sum is ok

[bergschreck]

I did some more research. Normal install DVD does also not boot. The same with old version 8.2, does not boot.

Looks like this is a problem with the boot loader. On my Acer Aspire One 521 netbook the live DVD is booting and I get a Gnome Desktop which looks nice, but has the wrong resolution for the netbook display. When I try to change the resolution in the settings, it crashes and is rebooting.

Looks like I have to stay with Ubuntu, which runs smoothly on all of my pc.

[Cobalt]

I had PC-BSD on an Acer Aspire One and it worked fine. Not sure if it's the same model number as yours, though. If all else fails, you could take the hard drive out and install using a different computer. I've had to do this with Ubuntu a few times.

[bergschreck]

I tried all kinds of PC-BSD install disks, all have the same failure in boot loader. Now I tried the FreeBSD bootonly cd and this boots fine on my Toshiba Satellite Pro. So there must be a difference in PC-BSDs boot loader which is not compatible with all pc (maybe something with memory check, because this step does not appear).

[toomanysecrets]

I'm having the same problems with this laptop:

System Information
Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
Product Name: Latitude E6510
Version: 0001

MD5sum is correct. The same live-dvd runs fine in another Dell laptop (Vostro 1400). Don't try DVD install because I need to make some tests before to install (it's the job laptop).
By the way, I don't have any problem with a FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE DVD1.
My problem is from live-dvd 32 bit platform.

Thank you.
Regards.

[bergschreck]

As I was told the PCBSD discs use an old boot loader which has some issues. I don't understand why they don't use the same (and working) boot loader as FreeBSD.

I'm back to Linux. I gave *BSD a chance, but as I saw they are far away from beeing as usable as Linux distros.

After 1 day of testing FreeBSD I found that it's difficult to use and configure, software is old (Firefox 9, current is 12), X11 fonts are ugly and bad to read. A good Linux distro (like Ubuntu or Linux Mint) works out of the box and is looking fine. It's as easy as installing Windows. PCBSD have a lot of work to do until they reach such quality.

[kmoore134]

If either of you want to help test this issue, I've changed how we roll
the ISO's to use identical commands to FreeBSD. The next snapshot will
have these changes and is using the exact same bootloader. Keep and eye
on the blog in the next week or so, and when the next snapshot is
announced, give it a whirl, and let me know if you still can't get past
this issue.

[toomanysecrets]

It will be a pleasure ;-)

Thank you Kris