SOLVED Help Please! FreeNAS Will not Boot!

[strikeing_789d]

Hi everyone I just bought a Dell Poweredge 710 server and I cannot get FreeNAS to boot from a USB stick to save my life. I have tried everything, changing the boot order, making the USB emulate a hard drive, selecting it and booting directly. Nothing works! I can easily boot windows server 2012 from the same USB but not FreeNAS 9.10 or 9.3 stable versions. I am able to see the USB and select it for boot and then it just freezes with a blinking command line as soon as I press enter.

Specs:
Dual 2.13Ghz Xeons
16GB Ram
8TB of brand new WD RED NAS drives
Bios version is 3.4.0 (Latest)
Perc6i Raid card (doesn't matter because I disabled the raid card in BIOS)

I hope someone will read this (no one ever reads my threads)...sigh..

 

[dlavigne]

Is this before or after installation?

If before installation, which utility did you use to burn the installer?

Does it freeze if you remove the raid card?

 

[strikeing_789d]

Hi, this is before installation, I used poweriso to create a bootable version of the FreeNAS iso. Should I try another tool ? I used poweriso to make windows server 2012 bootable and it works perfectly.

I have not tried to physically remove the raid card but I disabled it through the bios.

 

[dlavigne]

I would recommend using one of the tools listed in http://doc.freenas.org/9.10/install.html#preparing-the-media as they have been tested with FreeNAS.

 

[strikeing_789d]

Ok, Thank you I will give that a try.

 

[strikeing_789d]

Thank You I finally got FreeNAS installed!

 

[Hjrr]

How did you solve this? I have the same problem. I am installing from CDROM. USB works fine with other distributions but freezes on boot at “press del for bios” when I try to boot the installed FreeNAS 9.3 stable!

 

[dlavigne]

@Hjrr Why are you trying to install a 5 year old version of FreeNAS?

 

[Hjrr]

I am installing on a 10 year old server with 4 drive bays: you are not helping with your smart remarks. Can we get an adult in the room please.

 

[dlavigne]

It was a legitimate question. It will be hard getting an answer for a version that old.

 

[Hjrr]

Just tried newest FreeNAS 11.2 installed to same USB stick from CDROM image and same frozen screen as with 9.3.

(This USB worked perfect with XenServer 7.2installed on it )

so is this a constant problem with FreeNAS for some reason? I tried other USB sticks and same problem ONLY with FREENAS! Why?

 

[Hjrr]

How did you fix your problem?

 

[dlavigne]

Is the BIOS at its latest version? Have you tried both UEFI and BIOS installs?

 

[Hjrr]

UEFI is not supported and yes latest available BIOS.
This may be an older server but still capable of running FreeNAS for storage.