Boot manager doesn't boot

[Marcin Simonides]

In the few recent months I've been having problems with the standard
FreeBSD bootmanager: instead of booting some systems it would just beep
and do nothing.

At first I had problems with booting Windows 2000 (I reinstalled it on
the same partition it has been before for a few years, then windows
installed its NTLDR, then I installed bootmgr with boot0cfg and only
FreeBSD would boot. I started using NTLDR to boot both systems). Now I
have two more HDDs and want to play with different OSes and I'd like this
standard bootmgr (BootEasy, right?) because it doesn't need any
configuration, it just works (or worked...).

To the point: I installed FreeBSD 5.3 on a second disk to copy my user
files and configs from 4-STABLE. Then I deleted last three slices of
the first/old HDD (the first one was 8MB for Linux that I may install
some day (<1024 cyl limit or sth), I left it), created a bigger slice
for FreeBSD and a third one.  After copying FreeBSD partitions and
installing bootmgr (boot0cfg -B /dev/ad0; bsdlabel -B /dev/ad0s2, AFAIR)
FreeBSD wouldn't boot - all I was getting was a beep after pressing F2.
I then made a fresh install on that partition from CD - same thing. I
removed the first small partition and created only two - now FreeBSD
started (after installation) from the first partition. I think that's
odd...

Then I installed Solaris and got its own boot manager. Works nice, but I
need to install Windows 2000 on a second disk and would like FreeBSD
bootmgr's F5 - Drive 1 functionality for booting it.
So I installed it: boot0cfg -B /dev/ad0 - and it doesn't boot neither
FreeBSD nor Solaris - just beeps. Why? What can I do about this? (apart
from reverting to the Solaris' bootmgr for now - the good thing about
all this is that I learned to always back up the MBR :)

I've spent quite a lot of time googling and searching the archives, but
didn't find anything that would help :(
-- 
marcin at studio4plus.com