RE: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Tim Daneliuk Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2007 11:15 PM To: FreeBSD Mailing List Subject: Re: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: SNIP If your MB is new it should work. Older MB's have problems with the new way to boot off an optical cd. You can try BIOS/CMOS updates from the motherbard mfg if they are available. Sometimes even back-flashing to older BIOS fixes it. This is a brand new ABIT mobo w/latest bios on board. 3) Reordering/removing memory sticks made no difference. I am running a memory test ATM just to be sure, but so far, the memory seems fine. 4) No amount of poking around in the BIOS settings seems to help either. I am starting to suspect the MOBO. If I stick a couple of cards in the two available PCI slots, the system has trouble taking me into the BIOS screen. I have to remove the cards to reliably get into the BIOS settings menu. I wonder if this is one of those situations where there are not enough IRQs to go around. If it's a new MB the PCI cards are probably too old/slow to work right. I thought that even modern PCI busses would fall back to the old speeds. I've had not trouble with any of my other rather new mobos, running, say, old Adaptec controllers. Another thing to check is if the MB has any overclock settings turned on, these will screw up booting, going into BIOS, and some PCI cards. Go to BIOS and select reset to factory settings which turns off all the go-fast stuff. And make sure you confirm the CPU speed in BIOS with the actual speed stamped on the CPU. I've reset the BIOS to the most conservative mode, no overclocking, etc. Sometimes you just got to stick a floppy disk drive on the thing and boot from the 4 boot floppies then do an FTP install. I have about a dozen servers among the collection I manage that are like this - some are even newer ones. I would *love* to know just where boot is getting lost. In the case of your servers, do you see the same symptoms I am seeing: The kernel loading progress prompt gets painted (most of the time, sometimes it does not even make it that far) and the booting seizes up? No, they won't even load the boot loader. The symptoms your describing are classic for PIO/UDMA negotiation issues. In other words, the connection from the atapi controller to the optical drive is being negotiated by BIOS as UDMA and negotiated by the FreeBSD boot kernel as UDMA but a bug somewhere is causing the bus to corrupt data. The usual fix is to switch to PIO mode. The only problem with this is that you have already swapped optical drives, and I'd assume that at least one of the swaps didn't support UDMA mode (thus forcing PIO mode) you also said you already checked this, and even if it did negotiate UDMA it would be UDMA33 not anything faster that would require the special high speed IDE cables so we can probably rule out a crap CDROM cable. Lastly, the default on the ata driver is supposed to be PIO mode anyway for optical drives. Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Tim Daneliuk Sent: Wednesday, December 26, 2007 1:07 PM To: FreeBSD Mailing List Subject: Re: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x This was a brand new Abit LG-95Z mobo. The solution was to return it and get an Intel mobo instead. Problem fixed. Thanks for letting us know this was a problem board. I would strongly request you let Abit know what happened as well. It is only through feedback like this that motherboard manufacturers will actually test their stuff under FreeBSD. Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x
Not in this case. As I mentioned in a prior post, I tried booting with the 7.0-BETA4 ISO and got the exact same results. Response: Yes, sorry about that; was in too much of a hurry and missed the later posts. David ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x
I have 18 brand new Gateway towers at work (I can supply the model numbers after school restarts next week). I wanted to clone them using dd and an external usb hard drive. I couldn't boot 6.x or 7.x CDs on any of the boxes, but I was able to install 7 (I didn't try 6.x) on a usb stick, set the BIOS to boot from the device and run FreeBSD (and dd) from there. These machines have CDRW/DVDR drives installed. I've had no problem running any content based media from them at all, but I haven't tried booting any other media (like WinXP) from them, either. Tim David M. Patronis wrote: Not in this case. As I mentioned in a prior post, I tried booting with the 7.0-BETA4 ISO and got the exact same results. Response: Yes, sorry about that; was in too much of a hurry and missed the later posts. David ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 25/12/2007, Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am building a new server out of both older and brand new components. It is based on a Pentium D 925 and ABIT LG-95Z mobo. The DVD-RW is a Lite-On about a year old with very low hours on it. So ... here's a fun one: I can boot and install FreeBSD 4.x (CD) or Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop 10 SP1 (DVD) via the DVD. But attempting to do this with 6.x (I have tried 6.2R and 6.3-PRE disk #1) causes a hang during boot. The loader gets as far as showing the vertical bar that ordinarily spins to show intitial kernel loading progress and the the machine just sits there. There is some further activity on the optical drive at this point and then the cursor sort of jumps around a bit. I've not yet tried swapping the optical drive out - though I doubt this is the problem since I can load the other OSs. I've tried removing and moving memory sticks in case this is a flakey memory problem - no change. I've tried removing the only two cards in the machine: 3COM 905C-TX and an Adaptec 2940UW - no change. I have one last ditch thing I will try later tonight which is to force the DVD IDE port into PIO mode and out of DMA mode. But that's it. I am stumped. Ideas anyone? If it is not hardware, check your bios settings (and mayhap set back to default or very conservative) (of which the PIO trick may work). Also, 7.0 ran extremely well for me back in Sept., you might try it as an alternative. HTH Aloha, I had the same problem with a couple of older mobo's . I ended up loading 6.* on a hd on a different machine that I knew worked. I physically moved it to the problem box and it Worked. I think the issue could be the size or the type of HD in my case. Some older mobo bios jam up when a HD is more than 60 gig I have found. ~Al Plant - Honolulu, Hawaii - Phone: 808-284-2740 + http://hawaiidakine.com + http://freebsdinfo.org + [EMAIL PROTECTED] + + http://aloha50.net - Supporting - FreeBSD 6.* - 7.* + All that's really worth doing is what we do for others.- Lewis Carrol ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x
NetOpsCenter wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 25/12/2007, Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am building a new server out of both older and brand new components. It is based on a Pentium D 925 and ABIT LG-95Z mobo. The DVD-RW is a Lite-On about a year old with very low hours on it. So ... here's a fun one: I can boot and install FreeBSD 4.x (CD) or Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop 10 SP1 (DVD) via the DVD. But attempting to do this with 6.x (I have tried 6.2R and 6.3-PRE disk #1) causes a hang during boot. The loader gets as far as showing the vertical bar that ordinarily spins to show intitial kernel loading progress and the the machine just sits there. There is some further activity on the optical drive at this point and then the cursor sort of jumps around a bit. I've not yet tried swapping the optical drive out - though I doubt this is the problem since I can load the other OSs. I've tried removing and moving memory sticks in case this is a flakey memory problem - no change. I've tried removing the only two cards in the machine: 3COM 905C-TX and an Adaptec 2940UW - no change. I have one last ditch thing I will try later tonight which is to force the DVD IDE port into PIO mode and out of DMA mode. But that's it. I am stumped. Ideas anyone? If it is not hardware, check your bios settings (and mayhap set back to default or very conservative) (of which the PIO trick may work). Also, 7.0 ran extremely well for me back in Sept., you might try it as an alternative. HTH Aloha, I had the same problem with a couple of older mobo's . I ended up loading 6.* on a hd on a different machine that I knew worked. I physically moved it to the problem box and it Worked. I think the issue could be the size or the type of HD in my case. Some older mobo bios jam up when a HD is more than 60 gig I have found. ~Al Plant - Honolulu, Hawaii - Phone: 808-284-2740 + http://hawaiidakine.com + http://freebsdinfo.org + [EMAIL PROTECTED] + + http://aloha50.net - Supporting - FreeBSD 6.* - 7.* + All that's really worth doing is what we do for others.- Lewis Carrol This was a brand new Abit LG-95Z mobo. The solution was to return it and get an Intel mobo instead. Problem fixed. -- Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x
David M. Patronis wrote: Tim Daneliuk wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 25/12/2007, Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am building a new server out of both older and brand new components. It is based on a Pentium D 925 and ABIT LG-95Z mobo. The DVD-RW is a Lite-On about a year old with very low hours on it. So ... here's a fun one: I can boot and install FreeBSD 4.x (CD) or Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop 10 SP1 (DVD) via the DVD. But attempting to do this with 6.x (I have tried 6.2R and 6.3-PRE disk #1) causes a hang during boot. The loader gets as far as showing the vertical bar that ordinarily spins to show intitial kernel loading progress and the the machine just sits there. There is some further activity on the optical drive at this point and then the cursor sort of jumps around a bit. I've not yet tried swapping the optical drive out - though I doubt this is the problem since I can load the other OSs. I've tried removing and moving memory sticks in case this is a flakey memory problem - no change. I've tried removing the only two cards in the machine: 3COM 905C-TX and an Adaptec 2940UW - no change. I have one last ditch thing I will try later tonight which is to force the DVD IDE port into PIO mode and out of DMA mode. But that's it. I am stumped. Ideas anyone? If it is not hardware, check your bios settings (and mayhap set back to default or very conservative) (of which the PIO trick may work). I just swapped out the optical drive with a CD-RW - exact same symptoms. Fiddling w/BIOS, seems to make no difference, though I am still poking at it. I am utterly lost - never seen very standard hardware like this that FreeBSD could/would not boot and run on ... Response: Its probably an issue with the 6X series. I have experienced something similar and just spoke to someone via this list with a similar problem. In all cases thus far we were able to install using the 7X series. David Not in this case. As I mentioned in a prior post, I tried booting with the 7.0-BETA4 ISO and got the exact same results. -- Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x
Tim Daneliuk wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 25/12/2007, Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am building a new server out of both older and brand new components. It is based on a Pentium D 925 and ABIT LG-95Z mobo. The DVD-RW is a Lite-On about a year old with very low hours on it. So ... here's a fun one: I can boot and install FreeBSD 4.x (CD) or Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop 10 SP1 (DVD) via the DVD. But attempting to do this with 6.x (I have tried 6.2R and 6.3-PRE disk #1) causes a hang during boot. The loader gets as far as showing the vertical bar that ordinarily spins to show intitial kernel loading progress and the the machine just sits there. There is some further activity on the optical drive at this point and then the cursor sort of jumps around a bit. I've not yet tried swapping the optical drive out - though I doubt this is the problem since I can load the other OSs. I've tried removing and moving memory sticks in case this is a flakey memory problem - no change. I've tried removing the only two cards in the machine: 3COM 905C-TX and an Adaptec 2940UW - no change. I have one last ditch thing I will try later tonight which is to force the DVD IDE port into PIO mode and out of DMA mode. But that's it. I am stumped. Ideas anyone? If it is not hardware, check your bios settings (and mayhap set back to default or very conservative) (of which the PIO trick may work). I just swapped out the optical drive with a CD-RW - exact same symptoms. Fiddling w/BIOS, seems to make no difference, though I am still poking at it. I am utterly lost - never seen very standard hardware like this that FreeBSD could/would not boot and run on ... Response: Its probably an issue with the 6X series. I have experienced something similar and just spoke to someone via this list with a similar problem. In all cases thus far we were able to install using the 7X series. David ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x
On 25/12/2007, Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am building a new server out of both older and brand new components. It is based on a Pentium D 925 and ABIT LG-95Z mobo. The DVD-RW is a Lite-On about a year old with very low hours on it. So ... here's a fun one: I can boot and install FreeBSD 4.x (CD) or Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop 10 SP1 (DVD) via the DVD. But attempting to do this with 6.x (I have tried 6.2R and 6.3-PRE disk #1) causes a hang during boot. The loader gets as far as showing the vertical bar that ordinarily spins to show intitial kernel loading progress and the the machine just sits there. There is some further activity on the optical drive at this point and then the cursor sort of jumps around a bit. I've not yet tried swapping the optical drive out - though I doubt this is the problem since I can load the other OSs. I've tried removing and moving memory sticks in case this is a flakey memory problem - no change. I've tried removing the only two cards in the machine: 3COM 905C-TX and an Adaptec 2940UW - no change. I have one last ditch thing I will try later tonight which is to force the DVD IDE port into PIO mode and out of DMA mode. But that's it. I am stumped. Ideas anyone? If it is not hardware, check your bios settings (and mayhap set back to default or very conservative) (of which the PIO trick may work). Also, 7.0 ran extremely well for me back in Sept., you might try it as an alternative. HTH -- -- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 25/12/2007, Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am building a new server out of both older and brand new components. It is based on a Pentium D 925 and ABIT LG-95Z mobo. The DVD-RW is a Lite-On about a year old with very low hours on it. So ... here's a fun one: I can boot and install FreeBSD 4.x (CD) or Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop 10 SP1 (DVD) via the DVD. But attempting to do this with 6.x (I have tried 6.2R and 6.3-PRE disk #1) causes a hang during boot. The loader gets as far as showing the vertical bar that ordinarily spins to show intitial kernel loading progress and the the machine just sits there. There is some further activity on the optical drive at this point and then the cursor sort of jumps around a bit. I've not yet tried swapping the optical drive out - though I doubt this is the problem since I can load the other OSs. I've tried removing and moving memory sticks in case this is a flakey memory problem - no change. I've tried removing the only two cards in the machine: 3COM 905C-TX and an Adaptec 2940UW - no change. I have one last ditch thing I will try later tonight which is to force the DVD IDE port into PIO mode and out of DMA mode. But that's it. I am stumped. Ideas anyone? If it is not hardware, check your bios settings (and mayhap set back to default or very conservative) (of which the PIO trick may work). I just swapped out the optical drive with a CD-RW - exact same symptoms. Fiddling w/BIOS, seems to make no difference, though I am still poking at it. I am utterly lost - never seen very standard hardware like this that FreeBSD could/would not boot and run on ... -- Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 25/12/2007, Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am building a new server out of both older and brand new components. It is based on a Pentium D 925 and ABIT LG-95Z mobo. The DVD-RW is a Lite-On about a year old with very low hours on it. So ... here's a fun one: I can boot and install FreeBSD 4.x (CD) or Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop 10 SP1 (DVD) via the DVD. But attempting to do this with 6.x (I have tried 6.2R and 6.3-PRE disk #1) causes a hang during boot. The loader gets as far as showing the vertical bar that ordinarily spins to show intitial kernel loading progress and the the machine just sits there. There is some further activity on the optical drive at this point and then the cursor sort of jumps around a bit. I've not yet tried swapping the optical drive out - though I doubt this is the problem since I can load the other OSs. I've tried removing and moving memory sticks in case this is a flakey memory problem - no change. I've tried removing the only two cards in the machine: 3COM 905C-TX and an Adaptec 2940UW - no change. I have one last ditch thing I will try later tonight which is to force the DVD IDE port into PIO mode and out of DMA mode. But that's it. I am stumped. Ideas anyone? If it is not hardware, check your bios settings (and mayhap set back to default or very conservative) (of which the PIO trick may work). Well ... no amount of BIOS fiddling fixes this problem. Also, 7.0 ran extremely well for me back in Sept., you might try it as an alternative. I downloaded 7.0-BETA4 and burned the CD - This exhibits the exact same boot time behavior as the earlier 6.x releases. In summary: 1) I can boot 4.x or Linux install CDs. I cannot boot 6.x or 7.x install CD - system hangs at the beginning of loading the kernel and the video cursor starts jumping around - presumably because the program has lost its way. (I am assuming that the program having trouble is the loader itself, since the kernel is not yet loaded at this point.) 2) Changing optical drives made no difference. 3) Reordering/removing memory sticks made no difference. I am running a memory test ATM just to be sure, but so far, the memory seems fine. 4) No amount of poking around in the BIOS settings seems to help either. I am starting to suspect the MOBO. If I stick a couple of cards in the two available PCI slots, the system has trouble taking me into the BIOS screen. I have to remove the cards to reliably get into the BIOS settings menu. I wonder if this is one of those situations where there are not enough IRQs to go around. I remain confused ... -- Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Tim Daneliuk Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2007 10:53 PM To: FreeBSD Mailing List Subject: Re: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 25/12/2007, Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am building a new server out of both older and brand new components. It is based on a Pentium D 925 and ABIT LG-95Z mobo. The DVD-RW is a Lite-On about a year old with very low hours on it. So ... here's a fun one: I can boot and install FreeBSD 4.x (CD) or Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop 10 SP1 (DVD) via the DVD. But attempting to do this with 6.x (I have tried 6.2R and 6.3-PRE disk #1) causes a hang during boot. The loader gets as far as showing the vertical bar that ordinarily spins to show intitial kernel loading progress and the the machine just sits there. There is some further activity on the optical drive at this point and then the cursor sort of jumps around a bit. I've not yet tried swapping the optical drive out - though I doubt this is the problem since I can load the other OSs. I've tried removing and moving memory sticks in case this is a flakey memory problem - no change. I've tried removing the only two cards in the machine: 3COM 905C-TX and an Adaptec 2940UW - no change. I have one last ditch thing I will try later tonight which is to force the DVD IDE port into PIO mode and out of DMA mode. But that's it. I am stumped. Ideas anyone? If it is not hardware, check your bios settings (and mayhap set back to default or very conservative) (of which the PIO trick may work). Well ... no amount of BIOS fiddling fixes this problem. Also, 7.0 ran extremely well for me back in Sept., you might try it as an alternative. I downloaded 7.0-BETA4 and burned the CD - This exhibits the exact same boot time behavior as the earlier 6.x releases. In summary: 1) I can boot 4.x or Linux install CDs. I cannot boot 6.x or 7.x install CD - system hangs at the beginning of loading the kernel and the video cursor starts jumping around - presumably because the program has lost its way. (I am assuming that the program having trouble is the loader itself, since the kernel is not yet loaded at this point.) 2) Changing optical drives made no difference. The boot was changed from 4.x to the later series. I think it was changed from floppy emulation boot to cd boot or some such nonsense. You can get more info by reading up in the handbook where it talks about how to create a distribution CD. One of the options on the cdburn controls this. If your MB is new it should work. Older MB's have problems with the new way to boot off an optical cd. You can try BIOS/CMOS updates from the motherbard mfg if they are available. Sometimes even back-flashing to older BIOS fixes it. 3) Reordering/removing memory sticks made no difference. I am running a memory test ATM just to be sure, but so far, the memory seems fine. 4) No amount of poking around in the BIOS settings seems to help either. I am starting to suspect the MOBO. If I stick a couple of cards in the two available PCI slots, the system has trouble taking me into the BIOS screen. I have to remove the cards to reliably get into the BIOS settings menu. I wonder if this is one of those situations where there are not enough IRQs to go around. If it's a new MB the PCI cards are probably too old/slow to work right. Another thing to check is if the MB has any overclock settings turned on, these will screw up booting, going into BIOS, and some PCI cards. Go to BIOS and select reset to factory settings which turns off all the go-fast stuff. And make sure you confirm the CPU speed in BIOS with the actual speed stamped on the CPU. Sometimes you just got to stick a floppy disk drive on the thing and boot from the 4 boot floppies then do an FTP install. I have about a dozen servers among the collection I manage that are like this - some are even newer ones. Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDROM Boot Hangs But Only Under 6.x
Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: SNIP If your MB is new it should work. Older MB's have problems with the new way to boot off an optical cd. You can try BIOS/CMOS updates from the motherbard mfg if they are available. Sometimes even back-flashing to older BIOS fixes it. This is a brand new ABIT mobo w/latest bios on board. 3) Reordering/removing memory sticks made no difference. I am running a memory test ATM just to be sure, but so far, the memory seems fine. 4) No amount of poking around in the BIOS settings seems to help either. I am starting to suspect the MOBO. If I stick a couple of cards in the two available PCI slots, the system has trouble taking me into the BIOS screen. I have to remove the cards to reliably get into the BIOS settings menu. I wonder if this is one of those situations where there are not enough IRQs to go around. If it's a new MB the PCI cards are probably too old/slow to work right. I thought that even modern PCI busses would fall back to the old speeds. I've had not trouble with any of my other rather new mobos, running, say, old Adaptec controllers. Another thing to check is if the MB has any overclock settings turned on, these will screw up booting, going into BIOS, and some PCI cards. Go to BIOS and select reset to factory settings which turns off all the go-fast stuff. And make sure you confirm the CPU speed in BIOS with the actual speed stamped on the CPU. I've reset the BIOS to the most conservative mode, no overclocking, etc. Sometimes you just got to stick a floppy disk drive on the thing and boot from the 4 boot floppies then do an FTP install. I have about a dozen servers among the collection I manage that are like this - some are even newer ones. I would *love* to know just where boot is getting lost. In the case of your servers, do you see the same symptoms I am seeing: The kernel loading progress prompt gets painted (most of the time, sometimes it does not even make it that far) and the booting seizes up? Thanks for your time, Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]