Installing FreeBSD 7.1 on a Dell Inspiron 530s - HELP!

[patrick]

Hi, I just got a new Dell Inspiron 530s, and am having some trouble
getting FreeBSD 7.1 installed on it. When I boot up from the CD, after
it detects all of the disks, I start getting messages like:

acd0: TIMEOUT - READ_BIG retrying (1 retry left)

and so on.

Google results suggested that I disable ACPI from the boot menu. This
works insofar as I get to the installation menu; however, when I go to
partition the disk, it says that no disks were found. Is there a way I
can disable ACPI, but set some boot-time variables to help the system
find the disk controller?

I'm in the process of creating a LiveCD to see if acpidump might help
isolate just what the problem is, but if anyone has some advice in the
meantime, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,

Patrick