Greetings.

Assistance would be appreciated. The system claims it has installed correctly, tells me to reboot, then.. it doesn't work.

Technical details: Dell Latitude E7450 Laptop, with an extra 4G Ram.

Installation choices:
English
English(US)
America, Toronto
Full disk configuration
ada0, GPT, swap size: 8000 (MB), the rest default
Only one boot option available: FreeBSD BIOS loader only (the other two -setup rEFInd boot manager and setup freebsd boot manager grayed out)
trivial passwords, fish shell.

Now, time to reboot. -when should I remove the USB?

If I remove it prior to rebooting, I get:

Intel..
Copyright..

Client Mac Addr: numbers Guid: more numbers
PXE-E53: No boot filename received

PXE-M0F: Exiting intel boot agent.
No boot device found. Press any key to reboot the machine.

... The same thing happens when the boot usb is removed after the system shut down, minus one error, presumably when it tried to unount the usb but the usb was already gone.

..so.. No boot filename received. I'll continue trying with other options chosen, report on the results.

Second try:
MBR partition scheme,
Setup FreeBSD boot manager

F1 FreeBSD

F6 PXE
Boot: F1

Hitting F6 or F1 doesn't do anything. control-alt-del reboots. beyond that, no response from keyboard or mouse.

Third try:
MBR partition scheme,
FreeBSD BIOS loader only

...and this time I'm greeted by a blinking cursor.

Hello. What happens if you go to boot menu (F12) and select the correct Disk? What OS was installed before? Did you also try to delete all partitions with gparted before installing GhostBSD? I would also strongly recomend to check the Boot Settings in Bios precisely. Had many faults just because of wrong entries.

What happens if you go to boot menu (F12) and select the correct Disk?

...

The system is sufficiently messed up at this point that I'd have to go through the whole thing again, using whatever settings either you recommend or I think are correct, to get you a meaningful answer. I just tried this, (with the usb taken out and not changing anything else), selected internal HDD, and I've got the blinking cursor.

What OS was installed before?

Windows 7 -> Manjaro -> archlinux (might have switched between these a few times..) with multiple re-partitionings. I was configuring arch when my research finally reached further into systemd and I freaked out and bailed.

Did you also try to delete all partitions with gparted before installing GhostBSD?

It has occurred to me that this might be the problem. I didn't touch the disk at all. I made the assumption that the install would be "fully automatic" in that sense, wiping everything, and creating the partitions that the "wise men" thought would be correct. -I've now re-booted into arch, so I can re-partition.. if you could be so kind as to suggest what partitioning I should start with (and what file-system to put on it in the case of only a single partition), I would be ever so much obliged.. (or provide me with "the link")

I would also strongly recommend to check the Boot Settings in Bios precisely.

..and these should be..? -ya, I'm sure I can find it somewhere..

I would try to grab gparted or ubuntu (contains it as well) and just delete all partitions. Do not create new ones here!

After that try fresh install with GhostBSD on blank hard disk or ssd.

In BIOS I would check for UEFI, turn off secure boot, check what drive or partition is the first boot drive, often there is the fault. Sorry for my bad englisch.