From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG  Wed Jul 21 09:04:39 2010
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Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:04:53 +0000
From: "Thomas Mueller" <mueller6727@bellsouth.net>
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Subject: Re: system hangs on; "Probing devices, please wait (this can take a
 while)... "
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> Any ideas anyone ? I'm stuck. Cannot install FreeBSD on my computer. Every other
> OS besides FreeBSD boots up and installs. What else can I check?

I offered my admittedly cumbersome force-fitting suggestion.  Maybe start with
a minimal installation, possibly base and etc only, or as little as possible
to get something to start with.  If this can be booted, then continue with
sysinstall from the hard drive with the downloaded FreeBSD sets on CD or an 
msdos/vfat partition.  But then if you can untar the base and etc sets in
accordance with the sysinstall scripts, the same could be done with the
other installation sets.

Possibly, booting a live-file-system FreeBSD CD, you could have the
installation CD image on an msdos/vfat partition, and mdconfig and mount that.
You could bsdlabel, newfs, and hopefully be able to proceed from there.

I wonder if FreeBSD is the only OS with 
"Probing devices, please wait (this can take a while)... "

Nothing like this occurs in NetBSD or Linux; I've also installed various 
DOSes (MS-DOS 4.01 and upgrade to 5; DR-DOS 7.03 and FreeDOS; OS/2 1.3
through (Warp) 4) although MS-DOS 4.01 (back in 1990) and OS/2 had their
own problems.


Tom