From owner-freebsd-current Tue Feb 25 16: 1: 4 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6C04137B401; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 16:01:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from kestrel.alerce.com (kestrel.alerce.com [209.182.219.40]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E387443F85; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 16:00:59 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from hartzell@rosebud.alerce.com) Received: from rosebud.alerce.com (rosebud.lbl.gov [131.243.193.115]) by kestrel.alerce.com (8.12.4/8.12.4) with ESMTP id h1PNxdk6068854 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=OK); Tue, 25 Feb 2003 15:59:40 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from hartzell@rosebud.alerce.com) X-Authentication-Warning: kestrel.alerce.com: Host rosebud.lbl.gov [131.243.193.115] claimed to be rosebud.alerce.com Received: from rosebud.alerce.com (rosebud.alerce.com [127.0.0.1]) by rosebud.alerce.com (8.12.7/8.12.7) with ESMTP id h1PNxofb050313 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=NO); Tue, 25 Feb 2003 15:59:51 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from hartzell@rosebud.alerce.com) Received: (from hartzell@localhost) by rosebud.alerce.com (8.12.7/8.12.6/Submit) id h1PNxkYu050309; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 15:59:46 -0800 (PST) From: George Hartzell MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15964.882.143402.926923@rosebud.alerce.com> Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 15:59:46 -0800 To: Andrew Boothman Cc: Matt Smith , Lucas Holt , questions@FreeBSD.ORG, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: "NTLDR missing" after 5-RELEASE install In-Reply-To: <1046216562.3e5bff7214b3b@sms.ed.ac.uk> References: <9F67035A-48C9-11D7-8C19-0030656DD690@foolishgames.com> <1046192310.3e5ba0b6aa039@sms.ed.ac.uk> <1046193245.97029.12.camel@d80h149.public.uconn.edu> <1046216562.3e5bff7214b3b@sms.ed.ac.uk> X-Mailer: VM 7.07 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid Reply-To: hartzell@kestrel.alerce.com (George Hartzell) Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Andrew Boothman writes: > [...] > I didn't really change much about my system when I installed FreeBSD. > > Windows is installed on the whole of the first HDD, and FreeBSD on the whole of > the second. Prior to installing 5.0, the second disc had an old installation of > 4.6 that I wasn't using. > > When installing, I asked sysinstall to install booteasy on the first drive, but > otherwise leave it unchanged. I removed the existing slice on the second drive > and got sysinstall to create a new slice filling the drive, I then allowed > sysinstall to auto-size the partitions and complete the installation. > > I've tried every repair option that I can find on the Win2k CD. I've tried > the "fixboot" and "fixmbr" commands in the recovery console many times, and > despite fixmbr complaining about an "unusual" mbr every time, installing a new > one apparently makes no difference. I eventually managed to remove booteasy > from the first drive so that "NTLDR is missing" appears straight away, but that > is hardly a victory. I even followed Microsoft's instructions in knowledgebase > article 318728 and performed a brand new installation of windows into > c:\tempwin but even this new installation failed to boot with the same problem. > Therefore it would seem that whatever the problem is, Win2k's setup prog either > can't fix it or is oblivious to it. It's looking more and more like I'm going > to have to reformat this drive as I seem to have no way of getting Win2k > operating again, but I'd _really_ like to understand what happened here, not > least to ensure I don't repeat the same problems when I come to try and dual- > boot again! > > Apologies for this getting increasingly off-topic, but I can't understand what > I've done wrong here as I've done this many times before with 4.x. > > As ever, any light-shedding would be much appricated :) I had several problems installing 5.0 release onto my sandbox machine, and the solution might be relevant. My sandbox machine had a single disk, uses a "stock" (what came on the drive) master boot record, and had several primary partitions (aka slices). The first partition/slice contained a windows2000 install, the second partition had a linux installation w/ the GRUB boot loader installed in the beginning of the partition. The linux parition is marked active (using Partition Magic from windows), so the normal boot sequence goes: MBR --> GRUB ---+--> Linux | +--> Windows depending on the choice made in grub. I boot this way because the sandbox machine is a test environment for my laptop, and suspend to disk stuff doesn't seem to work on the laptop unless the vendor's MBR is in place. My intent was to add Freebsd to the third partition. I ran through the install and told the installer to just leave the MBR alone. Among the things that I discovered were: - both the linux partition *AND* the newly installed FreeBSD partition ended up marked active. - There was a problem with data somewhere in the BIOS/DOS partition table concerning CHS values and LBA values for various parts of the partition. (might have the acronym's wrong). Both of these rendered the machine unable to boot, I recovered it once by booting from a floppy, getting into windows, and running partition magic, and on a separate test run by booting from a live linux cd and playing with various fdisk-oid programs available there. So, all that said, maybe your partition table is slightly scrod, not so badly that it won't get through the MBR but badly enough that it can't find the NT partition? It'd be interesting to see what parition magic had to say about it. g. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message