Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 18:14:22 +0000 From: Mark Blackman <tmb@rcru.rl.ac.uk> To: shimon@simon-shapiro.org Cc: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: SMP success on W6-LI Message-ID: <199802251814.SAA17467@bird.te.rl.ac.uk> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 24 Feb 1998 15:32:55 PST." <XFMail.980224153255.shimon@simon-shapiro.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> We had a case where installing FreeBSD on a machine would succeed perfectly > well except that upon re-boot, the MBR would still try to boot Win95, find > FreeBSD instead and barf. > > The short version of it is that there is some protection in the BIOS > against trying to install non-M$ operating system in the machine. This was > confirmed by the vendor's support and empirically by swapping drives, or LL > format, both which succeed in confusing the check; Turns out there is some > signature in the MBR that the BIOS records when first encountering the > disk. The excuse is virus protection, but the reality is that even with > ``Virus Protection''' OFF, the feature is still alive. > > I hesitate to quote names here as this is a major little-i partner and I do > not have the proof in my hand anymore. that's useful to know, but I'm pretty sure it's not an issue in my case. For the record, I performed a low-level format of the SCSI disk before use. More importantly, the disk never got anywhere near any degenerate MS "products" and was completely unsullied when FreeBSD was introduced to it. -- ************************************************************************* * Mark Blackman * * Radar Meteorologist, Radar Group * * Radio Communications Research Unit * * Rutherford Appleton Laboratory E-mail: tmb@rcru.rl.ac.uk * * Chilton, Didcot Tel: +44-1235-446126 * * Oxon OX11 0QX, United Kingdom Fax: +44-1235-446140 * ************************************************************************* To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199802251814.SAA17467>