FreeBSD Boot Manager

[Jerry McAllister]

On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 05:23:01PM -0800, Kurt Buff wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:17 PM, Grant Peel <gpeel at thenetnow.com> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I was bored earlier tonight and I decided to tinker a bit with FreeBSD 6.4 on my Windows XP SP3 box.
> >
> > In that machine, there is one SATA drive.
> >
> > On that drive, there was about 100 GB of free space, so I decided to try putting FreeBSD 6.4 on it.
> >
> > During the install, I opted to use the Free BSD boot manage. The install went flawlessly.
> >
> > The problem is, when I boot up I get:
> >
> > F1 ??
> > F2 FreeBSD
> > F5 Disk1
> >
> > F2, is obviously, the new installation of FreeBSD 6.4, which boots perfectly.
> > F5 is a spare SCSI disk connected to an Initio controller.
> >
> > F1 is the probelem. Windose no longer boots. When I select F2, I simply get the cursor on a new line, and nothing happens.
> >
> > Like this:
> >
> > F1 ??
> > F2 FreeBSD
> > F5 Disk1
> > _
> >
> > Any idea what I might need to do to make windows work again?
> >
> > It may be worth mentioning, I had Norton GoBack running on the disk before I installed FreeBSD, although I am not aware if it does anything to the booting system.
> >
> > All suggestions welcome,
> >
> > -Grant
> 
> www.bootdisk.com
> 
> Find a bootable floppy image there that includes a DOS fdisk, and
> write it out to a floppy disk.
> 
> Boot your machine with that floppy, and at the DOS prompt, type 'fdisk
> /mbr' - it will write a standard boot sector, and Windows should boot
> again.
> 
> Of course, this will not allow you to boot to your new FreeBSD
> installation, but with other folks' help, you can probably overcome
> that - probably with GRUB, or another boot manager.

You should be able to do the same thing with a FreeBSD fixit.
Sounds like something got corrupted with the MBR or a boot record
somewhere.   But, the FreeBSD MBR should boot XP just fine.  The
machine I am typing on is dual boot with FreeBSD and XP (plus a Dell
maintenance slice).    All boot with no problem using the FreeBSD MBR.
So, using fdisk to reinstall the MBR might help.

////jerry    
    

> 
> Kurt
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"