5.1-RELEASE & Windows XP dual-boot issues

[Jud]

On 01 Jul 2003 18:12:20 +0000, Scott Reese <sreese at codysbooks.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 2003-07-01 at 01:34, Jud wrote:
>> >> > > to boot FreeBSD with no problems at all, but when I went to boot 
>> up
>> >> > > Windows, I received the dreaded 'NTLDR missing' message.
>> [grub stuff snipped]
>>
>> A few comments about the thread so far:
>>
>> ISTM the easiest thing for you to do is install booteasy on *both* 
>> drives.  That should work fine.
>
> I don't think that will make any difference in my case.

Costs nothing to try, eh?  Since you're planning to Win-ize the MBR anyway.

> Just a recap:
>
> I have two physical drives (ad0, ad1).  XP is on ad0 (the first drive)
> and FreeBSD is on ad1 (the second drive).  I have been using booteasy on
> the *first* drive with a regular mbr on the second and that worked just
> fine until I did a fresh install of 5.1.  What I'm trying to get at is
> how best to re-install windows (or work around the 'NTLDR is missing'
> message) *without* then rendering my FreeBSD install unbootable because
> we all know that Windows overwrites the mbr by default because it thinks
> it's supreme ruler of the universe.

Short of reinstalling the entire Win OS, you can save time and trouble by 
booting from your XP CD and electing to repair your XP installation, either 
automatically or from the console by using the 'fixmbr' and 'fixboot' 
commands.  Or if you happen to have a Win98 rescue floppy hanging around, 
you can boot off that and do 'fdisk /mbr'.

[snip]
>> You may want to have a look at GAG, which is freeware, open source, 
>> graphical, and rather automagic.  Worked "out of the box" on my setup, 
>> which involves dual booting Win2K and FreeBSD from a RAID0 array.
>
> Thanks, I will take a look at it.
>
> -Scott

Let us know how things turn out.

Jud