Dual booting FreeBSD and Windows XP - PROBLEM

Jud judmarc at earthlink.net
Fri Aug 1 08:03:16 PDT 2003


On Fri, 1 Aug 2003 07:09:30 -0700 (PDT), "John DeStefano"
<deesto at yahoo.com> said:
> "James A. Coulter" <jacoulter at earthlink.net> wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "John DeStefano" 
> To: 
> Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 11:17 AM
> Subject: Re: Dual booting FreeBSD and Windows XP
[snip]
> GAG worked great on my Dell Inspirion 2650 FreeBSD - XP/setup, but when I
> installed it on an old Gateway with Win98 - FreeBSD, it did something
> funky.
> 
> I get the GAG boot screen and regardless of whether I choose Win98 or
> FreeBSD the system states it is starting Windows 98 and then, after
> attempting to access the floppy drive, asks "Type the name of the Command
> Interpreter (e.g., C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM)" and finishes with the A>
> prompt.
> 
> Entering C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM is not recoginized by the system (it
> repeats
> the request for the command interpreter) and inserting a floppy with
> COMMAND.COM results in the system freezing.
> 
> I tried booting from floppy, worked fine, but system will not recoginize
> the
> c: drive.
> 
> Uninstalling GAG only removes the GAG start-up screen, system still asks
> for
> the command interpreter.
> 
> Read the GAG instructions and FAQ - no luck.
> 
> Anyone had a problem like this? Any suggestions on how to restore my hard
> drive without losing any data?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Jim
> 
> 
> I'm no guru, but this could be as simple as re-installing GAG, removing
> all file systems from the menu, and starting from scratch to re-add your
> OS selections (which will take all of a minute's time).  This worked for
> me once when I had a problem booting; something had changed on the disk
> and GAG just needed to adjust to the change.  Give it a try.
> 
> Failing that... I don't know whether 98 has a 'repair install' option
> like XP does, but if so, that might be a solution.  Also might work to
> let BSD write its boot menu to the MBR.  Maybe someone else can chime in
> with more info.
> 
> ~John

When you get to the A: prompt, type fdisk /mbr.  If it gives you an
error, start up the next time with a Windows restore floppy and try it
again.  That will restore your Win98 bootloader.  Then you can try
reinstalling GAG.  If it doesn't work, you can try FreeBSD's bootloader,
Grub (/usr/ports/sysutils/grub), or any of several other options.

Since this isn't a GAG helpline  ;-), future correspondence should
probably be sent off-list.

Jud


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