Issues reinstalling pfsense

mizzion

hi all,

looking for some advice as i have a strange issue and not sure how to proceed.

my setup is:

8 port i386 box with a Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor 1.00GHz
pppoe wan
lan on 10.10.10.*
previously running 2.3.4-RELEASE (i386)
trying to reinstall pfSense-CE-memstick-2.3.4-RELEASE-i386
also tested with pfSense-CE-2.3.3-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd-vga

So i have been running pfsense for about 9 months now with little issues however yesterday i kept getting issues with pppoe dropping out on the wan. i then put an isp issued "hub" on the line instead and it was fine so i thought modem or pfsense box, modem checked out ok.

During troubleshooting of the pfsense box i was having some issues with the gui and response time so i decided to rebuild pfsense using the latest version on the download page . The install seemed to be successful however when it says the system needs rebooted and you can then take your install media out … at this point the box rebooted but hangs when trying to boot pfsense every time.

During the process of trying to get this to work i have switched the install image, the hdd in the box, the usb pen and still the same until this evening when i downloaded an old image "pfSense-CE-2.3.3-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd-vga ( which i realize is wrong or at least different from my old build, i did this in case there was an issue with the most recent and my box).

During the boot from my usb i missed the selection options as i was distracted and when i got back to the pc pfsense clean install was on the screen, i proceeded to configure my wan and lan as before and when i logged into the gui i can see its running the version off the stick "2.3.3-RELEASE (i386) nanobsd (4g)"

1. im not sure how this happened, i.e. can it run off usb, i noticed when imaging the .img to usb it was way bigger than normal download image.
2. any ideas why i all of a sudden cant boot off either hdd even though the device and read and write to the hdd.

realistically i just want to be able to get the box running fine again off the internal hdd.....

any thoughts or advice is welcome

mizzion

just an update, after trying many builds I tried yet another hdd (drive 3) and that worked fine…. I can guess that the initial drive might have been dying, the second one worked fine in other device and would accept the install files so pass on that one.

anyway its back up and running on 2.3.4-RELEASE (i386)