fresh install of 5.2-r doesn't book on 80gig disk

[Jev]

Hi All,

I'm trying to install 5.2-R on a Western Digitial WD800 hard disk. By 
using all the "default" settings used by the freebsd installer, when I 
attempt to boot the machine I get:

Invalid Partition
Invalid Partition
No /boot/loader

FreeBSD/i386 boot
Default: 1:ad(1,a)/kernel
boot:
Invalid partition
No /kernel

FreeBSD/i386 boot
Default: 1:ad(1,a)/kernel
boot:

As suggested in the warning message before I get to set up my slices, I 
attempted to manually set the disks geometry to what my bios reports it as.

This is what shows in dmesg:
ad0: 76319MB <WDC WD800BB-32FRAO> [155061/16/63] at ata0-master UDMA100
My bios reports the [cylinder/head/sector] value as:
[38309/16/255]

Specifying either of those values causes the install program to inform 
me that they are incorrect and setting the geom back to [9729/255/63]. I 
don't know if the failure to boot is caused by the geometry.

In addition, I tried to split up the disk into smaller slices, without 
success. [Not]Using the freebsd bootmgr makes no diff either. I also 
tried this with a 5.0-R cd, and had the exact same result.

Also, the above mentioned warning message tells me to "please consult 
the Hardware Guide in the Documentation submenu" but I couldn't find any 
relevant information there :/

Help is greatly appreciated.....

-Jev