FreeBSD 8.2 Installation Endlessly Restarts

C

Consentacles

I downloaded disc 1 of FreeBSD 8.2 (amd64) and successfully installed it on a test machine. Pleased with its performance, I intend to install it on a primary computer. After inserting the CD-ROM and booting to it, the screen flashes a message about successfully finding the bootloader, and then immediately restarts, bringing up the BIOS screen again. This repeats endlessly. BIOS, success message, then BIOS again. Never given the chance to begin the installation, I am not sure how to approach this.
 
It might help to know the model and hardware of the primary computer. Reboots could be a hardware problem (power supply, RAM), an incompatibility with something weird (disk controller, maybe), maybe BIOS settings or ACPI.

It could also be a bad copy of the CD; checksums should match what is given on the main FreeBSD site.
 
Update:

I managed to get the installation CD-ROM to boot past the restart cycle and ended up at the bootloader, where I pressed '1' to continue.

How this came about:

I entered the BIOS setup.
I switched to "Advanced".
Switched "SATA Controller Mode" from "RAID" to "IDE".
Saved and Exited BIOS setup.

It seems FreeBSD is incompatible with the RAID controller on this PC. That is not a problem. This is a HP Pavilion p6520f (discontinued) and comes with no second hard drive. This makes having RAID enabled by default silly. I should have disabled it long ago.
 
I had identical issues with two PCs, both with AMD RAID controllers on board. It's very hard to debug, as the computer reboots almost instantly without print anything on the screen.

I sent a bug report, but never found the cause.
 
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