Hi. Can anyone help with this installation problem?

[Kevin O'Connor]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: freebsd-users-admin at uk.freebsd.org 
> [mailto:freebsd-users-admin at uk.freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Phil 
> Cartledge
> Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 11:27 PM
> To: freebsd-users at uk.freebsd.org
> Subject: Hi. Can anyone help with this installation problem?
> 
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> As I'm new to this user group I thought I'd better introduce 
> myself first.
>  
> My name is Phil Cartledge I joined this user group as soon as 
> I found it last week but have only just had chance to say 
> hello.  I am a FreeBSD newbie , I stumbled across FreeBSD 5.4 
> about 8 months ago after becoming increasingly frustrated 
> with Windows XP, I am now running FreeBSD Release 6 on a 
> couple of old computers I us for testing purposes.  I was 
> looking for a stable OS I could customise to meet my needs 
> both as a workstation and server.  After dabbling with 
> various Linux distributions and not finding anything that met 
> my requirements I came across the FreeBSD website and thought 
> I would give it a try.  Although the system looked a little 
> daunting at first I have become increasingly impressed the OS 
> and the documentation is very good compared to many 
> opensource projects.  I was able to customise the kernel 
> within a few days of having a functioning system, something I 
> would not even attempt with the Linux distributions.
>  
> Here is the problem I hope somebody will be able to help me 
> resolve as I have not been able to find a solution while 
> trawling the web.
>  
> I purchased a new computer a few days ago which I intended 
> setup with FreeBSD
> 6 with a view to abandoning Windows completely.  I have 
> experience so few problems with FreeBSD that I think I may 
> have overlooked a hardware compatibility issue; I hope not 
> but can not be certain.  I am confident that the hardware is 
> functioning correctly as I have successfully install SUSE 9.3 
> and Debian 3.2 to the hard disk and tried various "live" 
> distributions all where able to detect the hardware.  
> Unfortunately when running FreeBSD 6 installation CD (Release 
> ISO images off the website)it fails to detect the hard drive 
> during the installation process.  The system specs are below 
> sorry I couldn't provide the dmesg as I do not know how to do 
> this during the installation process.
>  
> 40Gb Western Digital WD400BB hard drive (jumper set to 
> master) Celeron D310 CPU I don't know who the manufacturer of 
> the motherboard is but it consists of the following, VIA 
> P4M266A Northbridge, VIA VT8235 southbridge, S3 ProSavage 8 
> graphics sharing 8Mb of system RAM.  AMIBIOS version 1.21.12 
> Release date 12/10/2004, onboard sound and 10/100 ethernet 
> port, 6 USB 2.0 ports, 3 PCI slots, 1 AGP slot, 1 x parallel, 
> 1 x serial and 1 VGA port.
> 512Mb Kingston PC2100 memory
> Pioneer DVR-110D (Secondary Master)
> Lite-on DVD-R (Secondary Slave)
> PS2 Keyboard and mouse
>  
> Please let me know if you need any other information and if I 
> obtain it via FreeBSD how to do this as I am now completely 
> stuck.  Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
>  
> Thanks
>  
> Phil

Phil
     Firstly hello and welcome to the wonderful world of FreeBSD and please
don't let a few problems put you off.

A couple of things spring to mind here.
Have you tried altering the bios settings, I've had problems with some
compaq systems on FreeBSD 6

If it is booting and running through sysinstall and it's just the HDD that
can not be found you could try getting hold of a dos/win9x boot floppy and
running  "format /mbr C:"   just incase any other installs have messed up
the mbr.

There is a slim chance that there is a problem with the CD you burnt, try
downloading the boot floppies and see if you can get an install going that
way.

Could you let us know the Make and Model of the PC, this maybe a known
issue. 

Regards
Kevin