Dumb question (dual booting WinXP with FBSD on 2nd drive)

[Bob Johnson]

On Thursday 29 April 2004 12:27 pm, Jay Chen <"Jay Chen" 
<jay_chen at OFDEngineering.com>> wrote:
> To Whom It May Concern:
>
>
>
> I have a Dell computer with Window XP and two hard disks (76 GB
> each). The XP is located on C: and I am planning to install the
> FreeBSD on the second hard drive (D: at this time).
>
>
>
This is not at all a dumb question, but it is a frequently-asked one.  
In fact, it's two.  The first is how to use the built-in boot manager 
in Windows to boot FreeBSD:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/disks.html#NT-BOOTLOADER

The second is what you MIGHT need to do to get FreeBSD to boot correctly 
from the second drive, although if you've followed the directions 
above, I don't think you will need it:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/install.html#PANIC-ON-INSTALL-REBOOT

> I like to be able to boot either of these two Operating systems with
> a selection at the time when I turn on the computer.  Unfortunately,
> I failed.  During installation of the BSD, my understanding is that I
> still need to have the Boot Manager residing on C.  I guess that that
> result a rewritten of the boot related files (boot manager).  I can
> not boot the XP any more.  Do you have any suggestions?  Where did I
> do wrong?

Well, your big mistake was not realizing that XP has its own built-in 
boot manager, and that you can simply add FreeBSD to the Windows boot 
menu!  I don't actually remember how to fix your problem (and it 
depends on exactly what you did), but I suspect that (a) booting your 
Windows install disk will offer you a chance to repair the problem, or 
(b) someone else has already answered that adequately, or (c) running 
the fdisk command in FreeBSD and setting the Windows partition to be 
the active partition will fix it (remember this hint, you may need 
it!).

Good luck,

- Bob

>
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> Thanks for your time on this matter.
>
>
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> Best Regards,
>
>
>
> Jay Chen