New install; BIOS inaccessible, only a cursor.

R

rdd1985

I was running Ubuntu before just fine and thought I would give FreeBSD a try and so I have just installed FreeBSD 10.0 on my Toshiba Satellite A665 laptop. After the final prompt to reboot, and upon restart, all I get is a black cursor. I took the HDD out in an attempt to check the BIOS settings and I get the same thing. I am a beginner with both Linux and BSD(Obviously) and I don't know what to do. I check my RAM just to be safe and it is seated properly. It worked just fine before. Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated.
 
I also forgot to mention that I attempted to reinstall Ubuntu and it does go through the installation process just fine. After restarting that OS it is the same thing.

BTW I only now realized that I added an extra post instead of editing the first one. Sorry. Why is this in mobile computing? I could have sworn it was in installation and upgrading forums. Did a mod move it? can someone move it to the right forum for me. I don't know what happened.
 
That system is not new enough for UEFI or SecureBoot. Can't speak to the Ubuntu problem, but some BIOS systems will not boot from a GPT disk, the format FreeBSD uses by default.

First, make sure it has the latest BIOS.

If that does not fix it, reinstall FreeBSD, but manually set up the disk with an MBR format as shown here: https://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=45072.
 
I got the Ubuntu OS up and running again but I still want to try FreeBSD so I will try your suggestions and post an update probably with further questions. Thanks for the reply.
 
rdd1985 said:
Why is this in mobile computing? I could have sworn it was in installation and upgrading forums. Did a mod move it? can someone move it to the right forum for me. I don't know what happened.
Click to expand...

We like to see all questions relating to (installing/running/troubleshooting) mobile equipment in the Mobile Computing forum, because it is quite a different eco-system, and that reflects in quite different installation problems and solutions. This way this information is bundled.
 
Perhaps this is not related, but, it is easy to give it a try. Some days ago, I submitted a Problem Report PR186977 – HD default-formatted by BSD-installer does not boot on Intel Atom D510MO.

Two weeks ago, I upgraded one of my machines from 9.2 to 10.0-RELEASE by installing it completely from the scratch, including letting bsdinstall partition the HD semi-automatically. The issue was (is), that after this, the internal FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE hard disk was not recognized by the BIOS as a boot disk. I checked the same (installing 10.0-RELEASE) on another hard disk and on a USB Memory Stick, and I cross-checked the behaviour applying the partition manually wit gpart (10). Nothing works on that board.

For that board I resolved the issue, by starting from a CD created from FreeBSD-9.2-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso. I typed ESC to leave the BSD Installer menu, then logged-in as root (no password), and finally I issued the following command:

gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 ada0

Perhaps, the same works for your Toshiba Satellite A665 laptop too.
 
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