From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jan 31 14:21:03 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C949116A4CE for ; Sat, 31 Jan 2004 14:21:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from mx1.heronetwork.com (mail.heronetwork.com [216.254.62.176]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0AD2E43D1D for ; Sat, 31 Jan 2004 14:21:02 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from sandshirmp@comcast.net) Received: by mx1.heronetwork.com (Postfix, from userid 1003) id 2ADA5A6A09; Sat, 31 Jan 2004 14:21:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from comcast.net (c-24-19-3-98.client.comcast.net [24.19.3.98]) (using TLSv1 with cipher RC4-MD5 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx1.heronetwork.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9DBE9A6A12; Sat, 31 Jan 2004 14:20:59 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <401C2A45.4010300@comcast.net> Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 14:20:53 -0800 From: Ryan Merrick User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031218 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Kjell B." References: <00b201c3e829$6a221eb0$0300a8c0@BELLDELL> In-Reply-To: <00b201c3e829$6a221eb0$0300a8c0@BELLDELL> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.60 (1.212-2003-09-23-exp) on nott.heronetwork.com X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.0 required=8.0 tests=none autolearn=no version=2.60 cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: MBR problem X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 22:21:03 -0000 Kjell B. wrote: > Kjell B. wrote: > >>I just installed FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE (using the mini-install CD) on my >>laptop which already had Win XP Home + Win XP Pro on it. During >>partition definition I chose not to touch the MBR. (I wanted to make >>use of Windows boot.ini for booting into FreeBSD.) Nevertheless, >>whenever I boot I get directly to the FreeBSD boot menu where there's >>no option to boot Windows. >> >>disk layout: >>ad0s1: 31 MB DELL slice >>ad0s2: 8001 MB Windows XP Home slice >>ad0s3: 8510 MB extended DOS slice with three logical Win partitions >>(one of them Windows XP Professional) >>ad0s4: 2533 MB FreeBSD slice >> >>I tried to restore the MBR using fixmbr from Windows Recovery >>Console. It doesn't help. I claims it has overwritten the file, but I >>still get directly into FreeBSD at boot. >> >>I've tried setting ad0s2 and ad0s4 as bootable and then writing >>changes (W) in FDISK partition editor in sysinstall. At the following >>choice of MBR, I choose 'Install the FreeBSD Boot Manager'. I then >>get "ERROR: Unable to write data to disk ad0!" followed by "Disk >>partition write returned an error status!". The same result also if I >>choose 'Standard' or 'None' in the MBR choice menu. >> >>(Another weird thing in sysinstall -> fdisk: Positioning the cursor >>on any of the slices and hitting F1 yields "Sorry! The slice file is >>not provided on this particular floppy image". This indicates to me >>that something is wrong with my installation, but what?) >> >>Any hints on ways out of this? >> >>Another question: In 5.2 there are two sysinstalls - >>/stand/sysinstall and /usr/local/sbin/sysinstall whereas in 4.8 I >>only find /stand/sysinstall. Which one should I use with 5.2 and >>what's the difference between them? > > > OK, I did find a hint Googling a little more. > > Apparently GEOM prevents me from using sysinstall on the installation for > changing MBR. I need to use the install CD and run sysinstall from there. > Then I could do the change of MBR and got the standard FreeBSD boot manager. > I now can boot Win XP or FreeBSD using the standard FreeBSD boot manager. > What remains is to get rid of that and use Windows boot.ini for choosing > between Win XP and FreeBSD, i.e. overwrite the MBR using fixmbr. > Hello, I have use to do this with win2k. The trick I used to boot into windows was to used fdisk -a from freebsd and switch the active partition to the one I wanted to boot. Then to get back to freebsd I would use the manage disk volumes(?) for win2k to set the freebsd partition active and reboot. -- -Ryan Merrick sandshrimp@comcast.net