Technical Support Question

[Julian H. Stacey]

Chip Oakley wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am upgrading to BSD from windows.
> 
> I am having complications with an old password from Windows that I cannot
> remember.
> 
> I created an ISO Boot CD on another computer and installed it and made sure
> to set the BIOS to boot from CD, to no avail.

There's 2 types of PC boot CDs I believe, FreeBSD changed to the
newer method in last year or so I think (maybe just for 8.* ?), so
if yours is an older PC it might be looking for the other sort. You
could try a few years old (eg 6.* or probably 7.*) FreeBSD CDROM
for interest to see if that boots.


> Is there a way to access the executable files from the CD

Question not clear.
You can access to read & execute all files from CDROM, by using the LIVEFS
(live file system) option.

To access files on the MS partition[s],
If fdisk shows the MS still present you can also mount the MS file systems from BSD (regardless whether BSD is booted & running from CD or hard disk)

For that you would need either
	mount -t msdosfs .....	if its an older FS	or
	mount -t ntfs -r ..... 	if its a newer NTFS
				it only support read only mode,
	That mount command calls eg 
		/sbin/mount_msdosfs
		/sbin/mount_ntfs
	Thats where they are on a hard disc.
	If FreeBSD hasnt installed yet, you'll find them I recall under 
	something like /mnt2/sbin/mount_msdosfs
	(I think the cd is already mounted)
If you want to write individual files on an MS NTFS you need ntfs-3g
which is partly broken (one error noted in my
	 http://berklix.com/~jhs/hardware/laptops/shrink/
& a lot easier to run from a hard disk working system.

> and overwrite
> windows for my BSD installation?

Well if you just wanted to trash the MS & not recover data ?
that's easy, the fdisk within BSD install should do it,
but you could always try something like 
	dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 count=1000
DO NOT TRY THAT ON ANY SYSTEM WITH ANY DATA YOU VALUE

Cheers,
Julian
-- 
Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultants Munich http://berklix.com
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