Date: Fri, 15 Dec 95 12:42:00 GMT From: "Burrell, Mike" <BURRELLM@gresham.agw.bt.co.uk> To: "'FREEBSD'" <www@freebsd.org> Message-ID: <30D1706D@psmgate.agw.bt.co.uk> Resent-Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.951219122453.17984K@fieber-john.campusview.indiana.edu>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
I recently attempted to perform a 'novice' install of FreeBSD on to a system and encountered a number of problems that I was hoping you could resolve for me. 1. When using the installers fdisk utility I chose to use my second Hard Drive rather than my C:. It showed the FAT, one partition and 4032 blocks unused on this drive. The disk in question was WD Caviar with 1.2GB total space and 600MB free and had been recently defragmented. I was curious why the installer couldn't see that there was free space to create a partition. 2. When ever I undid my actions associated with partitioning/labelling the installer would insist that I was trying to use my C: rather than the D: I had selected in a previous screen. This meant that once I had undone all changes I had to reboot and start the installation from scratch. 3. Next I downloaded FIPS and ran it creating 121MB partition on D:, this worked very well. I ran the installer again from the boot disk, this time when I got to the fdisk screen there were two large, used, partitions. I deleted the partition created by fips then created another using fdisk. this appeared to work so I continued with installation. I was installing from the dos partition on D:. I got an error message which said something like 'couldn't find installation files'. The installer then requested that I insert a root disk, I didn't have one so I pressed ok inserting the boot disk and the system froze. I restarted my machine and it wouldn't boot. I assumed that because I had been installing on to a partition on D: that my C: would have been safe. 4. It transpired that somehow the C: had been made unbootable and that the installer had wiped out the VFAT required by Win 95. Luckily I had a boot disk and from this managed to reinstall Win 95 from CD, after trying many other methods of fixing my dead C:. The re-installation as I hoped rectified the situation and I incurred, as far as I can tell, no data loss. 5. I am aware that backing-up is advisable prior to installations of this type however I was wondering if is safe to attempt another installation of FreeBSD, naturally I am hesitant. I was also curious as to whether the installers insistence to use C: (see point 2) was connected to the damage incurred on C: Any advice you could give on the above points would be greatly appreciated
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?30D1706D>