PC won't recognise boot CD

[tinivole]

I know I'm missing something, but I'm not sure what...

The ISO image booted up fine under Qemu. But on real hardware my system doesn't recognise the cd as a boot disk.

I have Windows/64Studio dual boot and have room for another installation. I torrented the PC-BSD iso and burned it to CD using Nero.

Am I doing something wrong? should I md5sum the CD after burning?

[graedus]

You can try a checksum test, but check the obvious:

1. Check the cd/dvd is configured to boot at the bios settings
2. Even if it is configured to do so, try booting another cd, such as windows install, or a linux live cd, just to check its working.
3. Some hardware (particularly old one) refuses to boot the pcbsd installer. I have tried recent dvd drives on old boards, and got no luck.
4. Sometimes a bad ide cable can be the one responsible.

[fredBSD]

Just a thought; did you definitely burn the CD using the image file in Nero? It wont be bootable if you just added the image. It's a long time since I used Nero but you need to look for an option worded something like 'Create disk from image file'.

[tinivole]

Nah, I'm a linux user, I don't fall into those sort of traps... :wink:

It turned out to just be CDs/CD-Drive when I burned them. See the first CD failed (so the computer thinks that 0 bytes of 0 is written to the CD) and the second CD passed, but refused to boot.

I've found a bizarre work around, as it seems that the supposed 'failed' CD has the boot data, but not the CD data, and the 'working' CD has the CD data, but not the boot data (do you follow?)

So I've found a temporary try at it by swapping discs at the Start Menu countdown.
I'm ordering some new discs (as I've ran out), but I've only seemed to run into one problem...

The Installer Partitioner doesn't seem to recognise the partition I want to install it on. (albeit, any partition on the hard drive at all...)

But, not to worry, I should have the new CD-Rs by tomorrow, I will let you know if I run into problems.

Iain

EDIT:
Hey fred, I live in the Shropshire area too! :mrgreen:
Lovely Scenary!

[fredBSD]

Hi Iain,

I should've guessed you wouldn't have made that kind of mistake, but it's difficult to judge a users knowledge level. The Qemu reference should have indicated you are experienced though 8). Glad you found a workaround anyway.

Yes, Shropshire looks great this time of year (any time of year), although I live in a rather densly populated part. Nice view of a wooded area though. It's going to be a cold one tonight...

[tinivole]

Yeah, looks like cold nights from now on...
I even woke up to a scenary of ice!

But, away from that. I've made the CD and tried it (it works) and the partitioner won't recognise any partition on my hard drives.

Which filesystem does BSD use? I may (just) find a way and reformat the partition I'm trying to install on to a BSD readable format in Linux.

I've also downloaded Desktop and Dragonfly. I'm about to see how they cope, but I'll come back if I still need help.

[fredBSD]

Odd that the partitioner won't recognise your partitions. I'm not familiar with "Windows/64Studio", but if it's 'Vista' and you partitioned the drive with it, then that could be the cause. It partitions the drive in an unusual way apparently.

http://www.multibooters.co.uk/partitions.html

PC-BSD uses UFS2 filesystem.

It was so cold thismorning I decided to get the bus instead of my usual half hour walk! :shock:

[tinivole]

"Windows/64Studio"

Sorry for the mixup. I meant two separate OS' in dual-boot, Windows XP and 64Studio (A Music Studio OS built on Debian GNU/Linux).

But I do have a stupidly complex system. To be honest.
I have two hard drives. 80GB and 320GB
Across these I have around 7 partitions (excluding swaps):
- 10GB for Windows XP system.
- 180GB for Cross Platform Recorded Audio Files.
- 40GB for Installing Windows Apps.
- 20GB for VST/VSTi's and other shared plugins
- 30GB for Cross Platorm file sharing
- 70GB for 64Studio system
- Leaving around 50GB for a possible third OS.

I haven't yet tried FreeBSD, but I thought I might be worth a shot.
But maybe I should wait about a year or two for FreeBSD to upgrade itself. Linux works on 95% of all hardware. I'm not sure how BSD is doing, but I'll try again, maybe when I get the time to save up the cash to build a new system with FreeBSD in mind.

Iain

Yes... All this talk of milder winters and I see that it is snowing at 4am in the morning! Then again, Shropshire is quite the anomaly when it comes to comparing itself to the rest of Britain.