FreeBSD 6.1 hangs at mountroot> during bootup

[Mike Peirson]

Hi all,
First off, I'm new to FreeBSD and this mailinglist so I hope I am in the 
right place. Anyways, right now I am having some problems with FreeBSD 
booting up. I have tried to install 3 times now and keep getting the 
same error. When I try to boot into FreeBSD, this eventually comes up:

         Manual root filesystem specification:
                   <fstype>:<device> Mount <device> using filesystem 
<fstype>
                                        eg. ufs:da0s1a
                   ?                 List valid disk boot devices
                   <empty line>      abort manual input
                 Mountroot>

This seems to be a prompt where I need to specify the location of the 
root partition, but the problem here is that it hangs or freezes and I 
cannot input any text. At first I thought it may be a result of FreeBSD 
not properly recognizing my HDD's geometry but I manually fixed that and 
it still is giving me this same issue. If anyone has had a similar 
problem or knows how to fix this I would greatly appreciate any help. I 
looked through the Handbook and googled this but I haven't found a 
solution yet.
-- 
Michael Peirson