I have an HP Elitebook 8440p laptop (Intel core-i5) which of course has MS-Windog 7 (ugh) on it, and I've been successfully running LINUX (Mageia 5) on it as well, dual boot, for some time. Never had a single problem. Well, except that I still need Windog from time to time 
Many years ago, I tried one of the *BSDs and found it interesting, but had no compelling reason to switch from my favourite Mandrake/Mandriva/Mageia LINUX. I've done a lot of LINUX since then. I've recently heard some buzz about FreeBSD and want to try it again. Diversity is good; it might even address some of the annoying little things that I've come to grumble about, but accept, over the years.
I have lots of experience in downloading & burning DVDs & CDs, and I check SHA256 sums. I've been doing embedded electronics & software for some 35 yrs, and running *NIXes for over 30 yrs, lots of variants. I've seen a lot, although of course, not everything.
So, I downloaded the following and burned them to their respective CD & DVD media:
I can't promise you that the frame dump is the same, but the rest is identical. All architectures, both CD & DVD media.
As mentioned, there has been no hiccup at all in the hardware otherwise, including optical drive, hard drive, processor, memory etc.
This does sound reminiscent of Thread 21649, although the messages were different; perhaps that would be due to the age of the posting (2011). That one wasn't satisfactorily resolved, it appears. I didn't find others.
Any ideas as to where to start?

Many years ago, I tried one of the *BSDs and found it interesting, but had no compelling reason to switch from my favourite Mandrake/Mandriva/Mageia LINUX. I've done a lot of LINUX since then. I've recently heard some buzz about FreeBSD and want to try it again. Diversity is good; it might even address some of the annoying little things that I've come to grumble about, but accept, over the years.
I have lots of experience in downloading & burning DVDs & CDs, and I check SHA256 sums. I've been doing embedded electronics & software for some 35 yrs, and running *NIXes for over 30 yrs, lots of variants. I've seen a lot, although of course, not everything.
So, I downloaded the following and burned them to their respective CD & DVD media:
- FreeBSD 10.3 AMD64 DVD-1 image
- FreeBSD 10.3 AMD64 boot-only CD image
- FreeBSD 10.3 AMD64 UEFI boot-only CD image (just on the off chance that the BIOS was lying to me)
- FreeBSD 10.3 i386 boot-only CD image (just in case there's something wonky about the processor - surely a 386 image would boot)
- FreeBSD 9.3 AMD64 boot-only CD image (older bootloader? no appears to be the same)
Code:
CD Loader 1.2
Building the boot loader arguments
Looking up /BOOT/LOADER... Found
Relocating the loader and the BTX
Starting the BTX loader
BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.02
--herein is some kind of frame dump, can take pic & provide if needed--
BTX halted
I can't promise you that the frame dump is the same, but the rest is identical. All architectures, both CD & DVD media.
As mentioned, there has been no hiccup at all in the hardware otherwise, including optical drive, hard drive, processor, memory etc.
This does sound reminiscent of Thread 21649, although the messages were different; perhaps that would be due to the age of the posting (2011). That one wasn't satisfactorily resolved, it appears. I didn't find others.
Any ideas as to where to start?