Cannot get Boot Manager launch WinXPsp2

[Dario]

Windows' NTFS partition was unrecoverable: even reinstalling MS's MBR 
and boot sector I still had errors (regarding filesystem corruption...). 
I've solved the problem by reinstalling Windows, and then configuring 
Windows' own booter to launch FreeBSD when requested, as described 
somewhere in the Internet.
I think that's the easiest and safest way to dual-boot Windows and 
FreeBSD, at least for beginners like me. I wish I had found some mention 
in the installation guide...

I had no time to try GAG, but thanks for helping anyway! :)
-Dario

Pablo Mora:

>Test with GAG.
>http://gag.sourceforge.net/
>

Original message:

>> Hi!
>> 
>> I've always been using MS Windows. Even if I've very little experience with
>> Unix-like systems, I've installed FreeBSD 5.3, because I want to learn it
>> and see if I can use it for some tasks.
>> 
>> Since, in any case, I can't abandon Windows (which I'm so used to...), I
>> installed the FreeBSD Boot Manager. After the installation process I'm not
>> able to launch Windows any more.
>> 
>> After the power-on self test, what I suppose to be the boot manager appears:
>>  F1   ??
>>  F2   FreeBSD
>>  F5   Drive 1
>>  Default: F2
>> 
>> If I'm not making mistakes, F5 will look for a boot manager on the other
>> hard disk (I have ad0 with both OSes, and ad1), so F1 should start Windows.
>> But I get this error message:
>>  Errore di lettura da disco
>>  Premere CTRL+ALT+CANC per riavviare
>> which means:
>>  Disk read error
>>  Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to reboot
>> Which is likely to be Windows' loader complaining for something unknown to
>> me.
>> 
>> What did I mistake? How can I get both OSes to boot as expected?
>> FreeBSD boots correctly, so I tried to make sysinstall reinstall the boot
>> manager, but it complains:
>>  ERROR: Unable to write data to disk ad0!
>>  Disk partition write returned an error status!
>> 
>> Please help me! I need Windows working as soon as possible...
>> 
>> Just one more question: I have an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard, which
>> has two ethernet devices. I got the Marvell Yukon Gigabit Ethernet card successfully
>> identified as sk0. Which module should I load to get the integrated MCP-T
>> NVIDIA MAC fast ethernet card (which should be part of the nForce2 chipset,
>> I think) working?
>> 
>> Thank you!
>> -Dario