Installation Disc Won't Boot

[Ian Smith]

On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:49:30 +0000 <lawrence.petrykanyn at sympatico.ca> wrote:

 >    I am unable to boot from 6.2-RELEASE i386-disc1.iso.  I have
 >    downloaded it and burned it three times without success.

See (4)

 >    I am currently running Win98SE and FreeBSD 5.4 on a dual boot.  I had
 >    decided to reformat my hard drives so I reinstalled Win98SE and would
 >    like to install FreeBSD 6.2.  I downloaded the disc 1 iso image and
 >    burned it to a disc in Win98.  I had to boot from my CDrom to
 >    reinstall Win98 so I know that my boot priority is correct and that my
 >    CDrom is working properly.  I looked at the burned cd with the
 >    6.2-RELEASE i386-disc1.iso file on it in FreeBSD 5.4 and everything
 >    appears to be there, including a folder called 'boot'.  But I just
 >    can't seem to boot from it.
 > 
 >    1.  Is there something simple I'm missing?

Sounds like you might be just copying the .iso file to the CD, rather
than burning an image file from the .iso ? but it's not clear how you
'looked at it' from 5.4 .. what does it look like from W98?
 
 >    2.  Should I just try downloading (it takes four hours) and burning
 >    more copies again?  (I've already done it three times...)

See (4)

 >    3.  Is the fact that I'm burning it in Win98 a problem?

Shouldn't be; I've used both Adaptec CD whatsitcalled and Nero on '98
boxes to burn .iso files - but you do have to select the 'image' write,
and to be sure of a good burn maybe drop the write speed to say 4x 

If you've still got 5.4 installed you could use burncd(8) instead,
eg 'burncd -s 4 -f /dev/acd0 data fbsd6.2whatever.iso fixate' 

 >    4.  Is there anything I can do in FreeBSD 5.4 to see if the file is
 >    corrupted?

Yes; also download the (tiny) accompanying .md5 file, then you can run
md5(1) from FreeBSD 5.4 on the .iso file to check that its MD5 matches. 

When you look at the contents of the CD, either from W98 or from having
mounted it on FreeBSD 5.4, do you see files and directories on the CD,
or just the single .iso file?

 >    BTW - I installed FreeBSD 5.4 from discs that I purchased through
 >    FreeBSD Mall.  I thought I would do it from the 6.2-RELEASE
 >    i386-disc1.iso file on FreeBSD's web site this time.

Your burned image CD for 6.2 should look pretty much like your 5.4 CD in
structure.  If that's so and it still won't boot then you can try a copy
of everything on it to /dev/null (to test the CD is 100% readable).

If that's all good and it still won't boot, show us the error message/s?
 
Cheers, Ian