From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jan 16 8:30:49 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from Samizdat.uucom.com (samizdat.uucom.com [198.202.217.54]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 805DC37B400 for ; Tue, 16 Jan 2001 08:30:31 -0800 (PST) Received: (from cshenton@localhost) by Samizdat.uucom.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id LAA26859; Tue, 16 Jan 2001 11:30:25 -0500 (EST) To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: 4.2R install on HP Vectra won't boot: no bootmgr, cursor hangs From: Chris Shenton Date: 16 Jan 2001 11:30:25 -0500 Message-ID: Lines: 34 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I've been installing and using FreeBSD since 2.2.x -- on a variety of current and obsolete HW -- but this one has me puzzled. I installed FreeBSD 4.2-RELEASE onto an old HP Vectra (with Pentium Classic P54c chip at 75MHz), 40MB RAM, 1GB IDE disk, onboard ether and video. The install went smoothly. When it's done, it reboots, does the ROM self-test, then the cursor just hangs at the top of the screen. It never presents the boot manager. It can boot from floppy fine. So I tried tedious variations on the install: - One FreeBSD partition in compatibility mode, with BootMgr - One DOS and one FreeBSD partition (compatibility mode) with BootMgr - One FreeBSD partition in "dangerously dedicated" mode (no compatibility) - Installed 4.1-RELEASE (compatibility, bootmgr) I don't know enough about the low-level boot process but I'm guessing something isn't writing the bootmgr to the drive? Or it's writing a broken bootmgr? The box at one time used to run NT, with different disks. The disks I salvaged for this had at one time in their previous lives had other OSes on them. Before install, I tried booting off them to see what they had: one showed bootmgr with DOS and FreeBSD selections (too small a slice); the other showed it trying to boot Solaris-x86 (no bootmgr). After all the FreeBSD install variations, I get *nothing* showing up except the blinking cursor. So it seems the Vectra was able to read the old MBR on the old disks but not the FreeBSD-installed one... or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Clues welcomed. Thanks. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message