boot loader issues...

[John Von Essen]

Looked through the archives, but I am still confused.

A fresh install of FreeBSD on a older Celeron box is having boot loader
issues. Basically, if you let it boot by itself, boot loader will start
working, then as soon as it starts loading the kernel - poof - screen
syncs and it reboots.

If I press some keys quickly, and stop boot loader and get a prompt. At
the prompt, if I type boot kernel or just kernel, the system comes up
fine. The only message is see is right before the kernel load, it says:
WARNING: loader(8) metadata is missing

In the archives, this sort of problem can happen when you temper with
/boot. But like I said, this is a fresh install (boot from floppy, then
install via FTP). I did the install twice, once from 4.7 floppies, once
from 4.8 floppies.

I am thinking that this might be related to some bad hardware. Could a bad
drive or motherboard cause this? If so, why boot: boot kernel work?

Thanks
John