Thank you for all that replied. It was the NIC that is the culprit. I did not at first suspect it because pfsense was able to detect it.

I had this same problem. My certificates were also there and the sha256 matched. I finally rebooted and the problem was fixed.

As Jahonix mentioned, are you sure you have your network cards plugged into the correct networks? Swap the cables over and see if that helps. Also, you don't mention what DHCP address you're getting on your WAN connection. Is the PFS picking up an address correctly on the WAN? And if so, is the WAN network address range similar/the same as your LAN address range?

There are deployments of pfsense in much much much larger than your tiny network ;)  No offense intended..  With much faster connections than 200mbps. If you just want it to firewall between your local networks and the internet - yeah can do that just put at C, if you want it to firewall between A and B then put it it either place and it will firewall that where you put it from the internet and your other location. You could also just put a pfsense in all three spots.. But the simple solution is to just replace the cisco all together..

If your hardware is that old it might not run 64-bit versions of pfSense. Try an i368 image instead.

Inlining the virtualip section into a backup of the new firewall worked.

thnx for solution.you are best.

I don't think so since I power cycled about a dozen times. I think it was something to do with the WAN IP address had already been assigned to my LINKSYS router when I first went into modem mode.

@MCRAFTAX: HI, I'm planning on making a computer/network lab and can only uses an unused ISP router. It has a USB port but not a console output, does this make it impossible? I have tried to SSH into it but it is always denied. The problem is that I can't find a way of getting into the BIOS to change to the boot drive. This there any way? Thanks, MCRAFTAX You cant install PFsense on normal router, U need a dedicated PC /VM setup )    , but u can try DDWRT Firmware for ur router if it support it  (DD-WRT is free Linux-based firmware for several wireless routers)

Answering myself: solved booting via LiveCD. It should be some problem with the USB booting routines, maybe due to a rather old machine : http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/775Dual-915GL/

You should be able to do that upgrade without any particular issues. You should definitely be able to do it if you use a freshly flashed CF card. You should use the largest image that will fit on your card. Some 4GB cards are actually smaller and won't take the 4G image. If it writes to the card without error though you should be good. Did you try running 2.2.X without restoring your previous config for any length of time? The biggest issue with those older ALIX boards is that they only have 256MB of RAM which is restrictive. I suspect that you have some packages loaded that are exhausting the memory. The system logs should show that though or the console output if you have the serial console hooked up. What USB device are you using there? It's possible something in the FreeBSD 10 drivers is having an issue with it. Logs should also reveal that. Steve

All the years I've been using pfSense and I never knew that was there! I was instead creating them via an authorized key file transfer at the command line. I performed an upgrade using this methodology and it worked perfectly. Thank you! P.S. Chris, just a heads up… This is part of a monitoring project for pfSense that I will eventually be releasing. ;-) Good karma!

@kamyflex: EDIT : this shall and must be included in the installation guide. What? I'd suggest you try it again and don't look away from the screen. There are two menus, the initial one when you boot single mode, and the later one. The menu comes up and after 10 seconds, it boots into live CD mode. You have to hit 'I' before the timer runs out. It's easy to miss if you are doing something else while the CD boots. If you miss it, just hit 99 and install. Perhaps one shall and must try to replicate a problem several times before insisting on changes to the documentation?

Just use the 4GB Image für USB sticks. If you need more storage use a ssd.

Excellent, thanks! Is it possible for a nerd/geek to be cool? Really?  :P You betcha ;)

All fixed. The problem was the laptop from which I was uploading the new firmware. Just after I posted this question - the hard drive started to make bad noises and crashed. I uploaded the new firmware from another laptop and all is fine. Cheers!

use siproxd and set outbound nat to manual

I had to reboot a couple of times during the holidays for other reasons not related to this issue but I thought I'd post to say that I've been running for 24 days straight without any IPv6 connectivity problems while staying on 2.2.4. I'm tempted to upgrade to 2.2.6 but not sure if it's worth the trouble unless there's been a bug of some sort identified.  A friend of mine setup pfsense with 2.2.6 and he's had these IPv6 connectivity problems very similar to what I've experienced.  A reboot of his fw always seems to solve the problem. I'll post again to give another update next month. LoboTiger