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Dell Dimension e521 no boot :( help

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Problems Installing or Upgrading pfSense Software
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  • E
    elementalwindx
    last edited by Sep 13, 2012, 9:19 PM

    I'm trying to get this desktop with 3 nics in it setup and going with pfsense. It goes thru the easy install perfectly fine, and even goes thru the custom install perfectly fine showing the hard drive and such.

    After reboot when I go to boot directly to the drive instead of the cd, it says it cannot find the boot device.

    Any idea what I am doing wrong on this dell?

    I went thru the bios and cannot find any options as far as modifying the way it boots up. It does see the cdrom and the sata hard drive.

    I'm trying to replace another Dell dimension that I got pfsense up and running on. But that box when I run a lot of traffic thru it will randomly disconnect the onboard lan which uses a fxp0 driver.

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    • S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by Sep 13, 2012, 9:40 PM

      The fxp driver is usually very stable.
      Do you have options for the SATA mode?

      Steve

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      • E
        elementalwindx
        last edited by Sep 13, 2012, 9:54 PM Sep 13, 2012, 9:44 PM

        @stephenw10:

        The fxp driver is usually very stable.
        Do you have options for the SATA mode?

        Steve

        Only two options are raid on and raid off. Of course I use raid off. Can't seem to find a desktop that has ever allowed pfsense to work with a raid controller.

        I'm attempting to install the newest snapshot of 2.1 now. Whereas the beginning of this thread is discussing the stable 2.0.1 release.

        edit neither version will boot on this dell e521. I get the message "NO BOOT DEVICE DETECTED, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS F1 TO CONTINUE OR PRESS F2 TO SETUP MENU"

        Which I'm assuming means it cannot find the mbr of the drive setup by pfsense :(

        edit again I have tried it with raid turned on installing 2.1 with the same result.

        Only other hard drive option is setting the performance from quiet to perfomance and to disbale/enable s.m.a.r.t.

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        • M
          matguy
          last edited by Sep 14, 2012, 12:40 AM

          Just to be clear, this hardware has booted other OSes before?  Or can still?

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          • E
            elementalwindx
            last edited by Sep 14, 2012, 4:11 AM

            @matguy:

            Just to be clear, this hardware has booted other OSes before?  Or can still?

            yes

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            • M
              matguy
              last edited by Sep 14, 2012, 5:10 PM

              If you have time, energy and/or resources, maybe try a vanilla BSD install, non pfSense style.  Just to see if there's something that BSD doesn't like about your machine, or something specific to pfSense.

              List of FreeBSD distributions: http://www.freebsdwiki.net/index.php/FreeBSD-Distros

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