# Can't boot with external hard drives connected. (BTX Halted)



## tedbell (Nov 19, 2018)

I'm having an issue where I cannot get to the bootloader with my external USB drives connected. My external drives are formatted ntfs and with, I assume, MBR partition schemes. My maschine is an old Dell Inspiron 560s with a Core2Duo 1.86 CPU and 3GB RAM. There is no UEFI on this machine so it's booting BIOS. My internal hard drive is a 1TB Hybrid formatted (fulldisk) to ZFS with a GPT partition scheme (I assume this might be the conflict). For some reason, when I try to install FreeBSD with any other settings for ZFS, it won't install the drive I need for my USB WiFi card. I have to disconnect the drives, boot and then reconnect. The drives work fine with no problems when I plug them in after boot. Here is my /boot/loader.conf:


```
kern.geom.label.disk_ident.enable="0"
kern.geom.label.gptid.enable="0"
zfs_load="YES"
if_urtw_load="YES"
fuse_load="YES"
snd_hda_load="YES"

# Devil worship in loader logo
loader_logo="beastie"

# Boot-time kernel tuning
kern.ipc.shmseg=1024
kern.ipc.shmmni=1024
kern.maxproc=100000

# Access ATAPI devices through the CAM subsystem
atapicam_load="YES"

# In-memory filesystems
tmpfs_load="YES"

# Asynchronous I/O
aio_load="YES"

# Handle Unicode on removable media
libiconv_load="YES"
libmchain_load="YES"
cd9660_iconv_load="YES"
msdosfs_iconv_load="YES"
```

My /etc/rc.conf:


```
clear_tmp_enable="YES"
syslogd_flags="-ss"
sendmail_enable="NONE"
hostname="jamie-FreeBSD"
wlans_urtw0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"
ntpd_enable="YES"
powerd_enable="YES"
powerd_flags="-a hiadaptive -b adaptive"
# Set dumpdev to "AUTO" to enable crash dumps, "NO" to disable
dumpdev="NO"
zfs_enable="YES"
fuse_enable="YES"
dbus_enable="YES"
# hald_enable="YES"
devfs_system_ruleset="localrules"
# autofs_enable="YES"
musicpd_enable="YES"
dsbmd_enable="YES"%
```

And my /etc/sysctl.conf


```
# $FreeBSD: releng/11.2/etc/sysctl.conf 112200 2003-03-13 18:43:50Z mux $
#
# This file is read when going to multi-user and its contents piped thru
# ``sysctl'' to adjust kernel values. ``man 5 sysctl.conf'' for details.
#

# Uncomment this to prevent users from seeing information about processes that
# are being run under another UID.
#security.bsd.see_other_uids=0
security.bsd.unprivileged_read_msgbuf=0
security.bsd.unprivileged_proc_debug=0
vfs.zfs.min_auto_ashift=12
vfs.usermount=1
hw.snd.default_unit=0
hw.snd.maxautovchans=0
dev.pcm.0.bitperfect=1
dev.pcm.0.play.vchans=0
dev.pcm.0.rec.vchans=0

#TWEAKS#
# Enhance shared memory X11 interface
kern.ipc.shmmax=67108864
kern.ipc.shmall=32768

# Enhance desktop responsiveness under high CPU use (200/224)
kern.sched.preempt_thresh=224

# Bump up maximum number of open files
kern.maxfiles=200000

kern.coredump=0
```

Thanks for any help.


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## ShelLuser (Nov 19, 2018)

Seems more like a hardware problem than something related to FreeBSD.


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## tedbell (Nov 19, 2018)

I ran a disk check in windows and the externals are fine except for errors thrown up because of non-WIndows standard filenames. I think it is because of a mix of GPT (boot drive) and MBR (externals) and because this comp has no UEFI.


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