From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jan 16 18:21:27 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from apollo.gti.net (apollo.gti.net [199.171.27.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7472B37B400 for ; Tue, 16 Jan 2001 18:21:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from sludge.amc-inc.com (morr0648.gti.net [208.216.122.48]) by apollo.gti.net (mail) with ESMTP id 3F271145A68; Tue, 16 Jan 2001 21:21:07 -0500 (EST) Content-Length: 1807 Message-ID: X-Mailer: XFMail 1.4.0 on FreeBSD X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 21:19:30 -0500 (EST) Reply-To: Mark Yeck From: Mark Yeck To: Chris Shenton Subject: RE: 4.2R install on HP Vectra won't boot: no bootmgr, cursor han Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On 16-Jan-01 Chris Shenton wrote: > 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. Here's a clue I found on dejanews. Hopefully it will help. http://x69.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=700810190&CONTEXT=976477108.518324252&hitnum=2 -mark To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message