Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed
Gayn Winters
gayn.winters at bristolsystems.com
Wed Sep 14 14:05:07 PDT 2005
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alex Zbyslaw [mailto:xfb52 at dial.pipex.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2005 1:59 AM
> To: gayn.winters at bristolsystems.com
> Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed
>
> Gayn Winters wrote:
>
> >>Alex Zbyslaw [mailto:xfb52 at dial.pipex.com]
> >>
> >>Why do you think it's not safe to add hard drives?
> >
> >It doesn't seem "safe" if Windows blows away the multiboot MBR that
> >FreeBSD so carefully made! Windows overwriting the MBR
> seems to be the reason people recommend loading Windows before loading
> FreeBSD, which I do. I just never realized that this problem would
come back
> to bite me when I added another disk drive.
> >
> I know of know reason why it should. I've added disks half a dozen
> times without blowing away any MBRs. Even the Windows blowing away
the
> MBR is an annoyance, not a disaster since it is easy to rewrite.
> Whatever pickle you find yourself in seems to have to do with
> more than just adding a disk or Windows killing your MBR.
>
> --Alex
I certainly am willing to admit that I'm doing something stupid!
The motherboard and its BIOS are also known to be strange.
One thing to note is that if I reconfigure (fresh FBSD install), add
hardware, and then boot first into FBSD, all is well EXCEPT the boot
loader, whose prompt is:
F1 ???
F2 FreeBSD
F5 Drive 1
Default: F2
If I select F2, then I get FreeBSD. If I select F5 I get Windows! I.e.
F5 gives me the same slice as does F1!!! (Drive1 is the extra IDE
drive.) I can't blame Windows for this, since it never got booted.
Also, if FBSD gets booted first, Windows doesn't (further) corrupt the
MBR. Incidentally, rewriting the MBR with
boot0cfg -B -o packet /dev/ad1
does not change anything. The F5 option is still there, and it still
brings up the Windows that is on slice1. If I add a third IDE drive,
the situation also remains the same. In particular, I don't get an F9
option.
I'm still in a curious pickle, but at least this one isn't choking me!
Thanks again for the help!
-gayn
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