What is your host's IP address? What kind of networking did you use for the VM? e.g. NAT or bridged etc Do you have any VLANs setup? Why are you using /29 for your LAN and not just plain /24?

Ok so not everything…. but I am obligated to post and update. There was still some issues to be worked out: I redid pfsense from scratch again this time to a 10.1.1.0/24 subnet Testing  direct to pc from pfsense works I go live and change over all those manual IPs. I note that some devices could get dhcp, while others could and the usual reset ip and reboot devices still wont work, even updated LAN drivers. At some point I decide to reset the Netgear managed switch (GS724T v2)- all of a sudden the down devices all got IP addresses . WTAF?? It would appear that the secondary culprit was the switch. So subtly messing with dhcp messages between pfsense and my PC! At least this is my home lab and not some live work environment. I'd be out of a job by now.

I would be on-site for that then.

pfsense 2.4.2p1 with ZFS on Hyper-v starts without any error after powerloss. Continue testing…

" currently populated by a double-wide video card" Router doesn't even need a video card ;)

Ah, OK so the two networks will be isolated in VMWare? That should be possible. You will be double NATing though pfSense I imagine unless you have multiple public IPs from your provider. What is not working? Steve

Devices like the SG-1000 without 'console' => not for me. Btw : I'm wrong, the 'doc' says all you need is a USB key …. https://www.netgate.com/docs/pfsense/sg-1000/reinstall-pfsense.html

See also : https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=141404.msg772258#msg772258 As always : Don't use the yellow port. Give it a static IP - point it's gateway to pfSEnse LAN Stop DHCP. If possible, set it to AP only mode. Done.

I am definitely avoiding any of the Cxxxx CPU's now when I am doing hardware selection.  If this same bug happened on Intel's server or desktop CPU's, yes it will definitely be a big deal.  Just look at AMD's ryzen issue, and that only effected very edge cases. I wonder if I actually received the same hardware as what I sent in. On one of my other SG-2440 replacements, I got someone else's system w/ a different serial # and config. Granted that system had no functional issues after a config reset.  May be it was luck to have gotten someone else's box??

@internetservices: Solution: disable 'Monitor M-Wait' in bios Could be under Features tab > CPU Configuration I cant seem to find this feature in my bios http://asrock.com/mb/Intel/J3455-ITX/ Any suggestions?

Are you able to press the key during that count time and perform a run recovery? You will need the sg-3100 arm firmware found at the gold member`s page and a pendrive. You can find the procedure to perform this recovery at: https://www.netgate.com/docs Hope it helps you. Edit: You will have to configure everything again if you do the procedure above ok? All configuration will be lost !!

Ive got several boxes that are working fine..  Try pressing your F-5 key..

Seems to be good now. Perhaps the lock was something temporary. I dunno. I upgraded. Thanks.

It should be on by default but you can check yourself after installation. Depending on the filesystem used: UFS - run this on the command prompt: tunefs -p /dev/ufsid/ Where <identifier>is the UFSID for the root filesystem, you can get that from /etc/fstab from the line that has "/" as the mountpoint (second column). ZFS - run this: sysctl vfs.zfs.trim.enabled If it reports value of 1 then your system is using TRIM.</identifier>