Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 14:20:53 -0800 From: Ryan Merrick <sandshirmp@comcast.net> To: "Kjell B." <homebell@telia.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: MBR problem Message-ID: <401C2A45.4010300@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <00b201c3e829$6a221eb0$0300a8c0@BELLDELL> References: <00b201c3e829$6a221eb0$0300a8c0@BELLDELL>
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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
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