Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 13:02:06 -0400 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> To: Jay Chen <jay_chen@OFDEngineering.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Dumb question Message-ID: <4091350E.8050807@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <!~!UENERkVCMDkAAQACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAAAh4hUJpQK6kWETXTBdyGCG8KAAAAQAAAAzGyZ0hRIv0Kj4SsvXdMcZQEAAAAA@OFDEngineering.com> References: <!~!UENERkVCMDkAAQACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAAAh4hUJpQK6kWETXTBdyGCG8KAAAAQAAAAzGyZ0hRIv0Kj4SsvXdMcZQEAAAAA@OFDEngineering.com>
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Jay Chen wrote:
> To Whom It May Concern:
>
> I have a Dell computer with Window XP and two hard disks (76 GB each).
> The XP is located on C: and I am planning to install the FreeBSD on the
> second hard drive (D: at this time).
>
> I like to be able to boot either of these two Operating systems with a
> selection at the time when I turn on the computer. Unfortunately, I
> failed. During installation of the BSD, my understanding is that I
> still need to have the Boot Manager residing on C. I guess that that
> result a rewritten of the boot related files (boot manager). I can not
> boot the XP any more. Do you have any suggestions? Where did I do
> wrong?
It's difficult to be sure what went wrong without more details on exactly
what you did. I can say two things about it:
1) It is possible, as I've seen others do it.
2) You're not the first person to have difficulty, so it's probably a
somewhat difficult thing to do.
sysinstall is capable of setting up dual-boot automatically when you only
have one hard drive, but it seems like it has problems sometimes when there
are two hard drives.
On the flip side, you should be able to get Windows XP booting again by
doing the following:
1) Find a working windows computer (doesn't matter which version of Windows
as far as I know)
2) Use the Windows format program to make a bootable floppy.
3) Copy the fdisk program from the c: drive to the floppy disk
4) Boot the computer with the problem off the floppy
5) When you get an A: prompt, enter "fdisk /mbr"
6) You should then be able to reboot the computer and have Windows XP work
again.
--
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com
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