5.1-RELEASE & Windows XP dual-boot issues

[Jesse Guardiani]

Scott Reese wrote:

> On Mon, 2003-06-30 at 11:33, Chuck Swiger wrote:
>> Scott Reese wrote:
>> > After the install, I was able
>> > to boot FreeBSD with no problems at all, but when I went to boot up
>> > Windows, I received the dreaded 'NTLDR missing' message.
>> 
>> Try marking the Windows partition as active (via fdisk from MS-DOS, or
>> /stand/sysinstall), and see whether that does any better.
> 
> Just tried it from /stand/sysinstall and no joy.  Though I maybe did get
> a clue why the fresh install mucked things up:  When I told fdisk to
> "write" the changes I made (marking the first NTFS partition bootable),
> I received an error message that ad0 couldn't be written.  I'm still
> receiving the 'NTLDR is missing' message.

Do you have a setup CD? If so, you might be able to fix things with the
recovery console. If not, download the recovery console setup disks from
microsoft's site and run them.


> 
> This worked for 4.x and 5.0-RELEASE on this same machine and I'm
> somewhat mystified as to why it is now broken with a fresh 5.1 install.
> 
> Any other suggestions?  I'm thinking of perhaps re-installing Windows
> from scratch (I don't need it for much) and then using the 2k boot
> loader to boot FreeBSD.  There is a way to do that, isn't there?

Absolutely. It's pretty easy too. All you have to do is:

1.) Leave the WXP boot sector alone during FreeBSD install so the NT loader
    still works.

2.) Copy /boot/boot1 from your FreeBSD setup CD, hard disk, or fixit
    media to an msdos floppy disk:

    mount -t msdos /floppy
    cp /boot/boot1 /floppy
    umount /floppy

3.) Boot into WXP, copy 'boot1' from the floppy to your C:\ drive and
    call it 'bootsect.bsd', then add an entry in your C:\boot.ini like
    this:

C:\bootsect.bsd="FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE"

Reboot and enjoy.

It's not really quite that cut-and-dry in practice (sometimes you'll have
to manually set the WXP partition as bootable from FreeBSD's fdisk utility,
for example. And when doing a fresh install, you'll probably have to get
boot1 from the fixit media.), but those are the basic steps, and if you
can muddle through them you'll be alright.

-- 
Jesse Guardiani, Systems Administrator
WingNET Internet Services,
P.O. Box 2605 // Cleveland, TN 37320-2605
423-559-LINK (v)  423-559-5145 (f)
http://www.wingnet.net