Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 11:56:08 -0400 From: Duane Whitty <duane@greenmeadow.ca> Cc: Peter <petermatulis@yahoo.ca>, freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: MBR blown away Message-ID: <43EE0918.8010801@greenmeadow.ca> In-Reply-To: <200602111532.k1BFWTDQ017997@clunix.cl.msu.edu> References: <200602111532.k1BFWTDQ017997@clunix.cl.msu.edu>
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Jerry McAllister wrote: >> I need help. >> >> I added a slice to a single hard drive dual-boot (windows) system and now >> I guess that scrambled my MBR. I get three options from the FreeBSD (5.4) >> boot manager: >> >> 1. DOS >> 2. FreeBSD >> 3. FreeBSD >> >> I can boot to FreeBSD (the new slice is fine) by choosing option 3 but the >> windows/dos option is fried. > > The MBR itself looks OK. According to that piece of menu you posted, you > just added another bootable slice. So, there are now two bootable FreeBSD > slices and one bootable Microsloth slice. > > Are you saying that the MS slice will no longer boot if you select '1' from > the menu? If that is the case, it is not the MBR that was messed up. > It is something in the MS slice - probably their boot sector. I don't even > pretend to know how MS sets up theirs if it is any different from FreeBSD. > > But, the MBR is doing what it is supposed to do. It discovers all the > bootable slices and makes a menu and transfers control to the selected > slice. What happens after that is not the problem of the MBR. > > That may be bad news, I suppose. It might be easier to fix the MBR > than the MS slice boot code if it is actually messed up. > > It might be as simple as you managed to mark the MS slice as not bootable > in some way, but in that case, I wouldn't expect the MBR to be able to > see that slice and put it in the menu as bootable. > > Did you use some utility to shrink the original two slices to fit in > the new one? Or was there already unused space (previously unallocated) > that you were using? Maybe the utility you used to shrink the other > slices messed something up. You might need to go back to it and > check it out. > > Was the MS slice an NTFS type file system? Many of the free utilities > for resizing slices do not work properly on NTFS systems. So, it is > possible, in that case, that the MS slice was not shrunk properly and > so it got trashed at that stage. > > Just some thing to consider. > Good luck, > > ////jerry > >> My current strategy is to use boot0cfg: >> >> # boot0cfg -B >> >> But I'm a little squeemish. I don't want to be locked out of FreeBSD (I >> barely use Windows but I still would like it back for Visio). Any >> guidance? > > As per my comments above, I don't think rewriting the MBR will help any. > /jrm >> -- >> Peter Hi, Just out of curiosity, did you try using sysinstall again to take a look at things? Maybe you can mark your Windows partition bootable? Trying this might at least tell you whether your Windows slice is "fried" or not. I know I seem to have some sort of trouble along these lines every time I do a fresh install because I'm always trying to run so many different systems on one machine. Windows just doesn't play nice. But so far I have always been able to get things straightened out. --Duane
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