Adding a XP disk to FreeBSD machine

[Nikola Lecic]

On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 16:11:28 -0400
Jerry McAllister <jerrymc at msu.edu> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 17, 2007 at 10:01:16PM +0200, Nikola Lecic wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 09:23:00 -0700
> > Garrett Cooper <youshi10 at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> > 
> > > Rico Secada wrote:
> > > > [...]
> > > > I have another HD which used to be in the same box running XP.
> > > > I set this drive to slave and installed it into the box in
> > > > order to dualboot. 
> > > > [...]
> > > >   
> > > 1. All windows disks must be primary if you're going to boot off
> > > of them -- sorry, it's a stupid requirement that M$ setup a long
> > > time
> > 
> > What do you mean? I think he asked about slave (primary I suppose).
> > I ask this because ...
> > 
> > > 3. You'll have to setup the boot manager on the windows disk.
> > 
> > ... "windows" can normally boot from slave position without
> > bootloader, (in some cases with help of 'boot.ini' and
> > ntldr/ntdetect.com, but AFAIK only if booting is impossible even
> > when ad1 (D) is selected in BIOS as the first boot choice).
> 
> HE is trying to dual boot the machine.   He needs something on that
> second disk that the MBR on the first disk can transfer control to.
> That something is the MBR on the second disk.  That's the way it
> works.

Yes :)

I said that it's _possible_ to keep the second disk stay untouched (as
it remained after xp installation). I replied because (1)+(3) of
Garrett's e-mail implied (maybe, that's why I asked him a question)
that xp cannot start from the second disk without _separate_ bootloader
installed _there_ from the outside, which is not true.

My statement doesn't say anything about contents of the first disk and
doesn't negate any of the options you proposed.

I did add two things:

  (a) a proposition to check ad1 separately -- doesn't hurt;

  (b) a possible help if xp cannot orientate itself.

Nikola Lečić