4.9-RELEASE + XP Pro problem

Bob Johnson bob88 at eng.ufl.edu
Fri Feb 20 10:46:30 PST 2004


> Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 08:54:24 -0600
> From: Joel Gudknecht <jgudknecht at marathonmultimedia.com>
> Subject: 4.9-RELEASE + XP Pro problem
> Message-ID: <7A601EA4F6472748A4B828E59222FF03D75FBE at SERVER_EMAIL>
> 
> Hello All,
> 
> I'm having a hell of a time getting XP Pro and 4.9 on the same drive.
[...]

> Installed XP first, then 4.9, said NONE at the boot menu during install.
> 
> Went to reboot and bsd had taken over either the boot sector or the mbr.
> 
> Tried xp recovery console, fixmbr, fixboot, nothing worked, bsd continues
> to boot up by default.
> 

I would expect the XP recovery stuff to get you back to XP.  I've used 
that under W2K.  But you don't want to get back to XP quite yet...

> What I want is to have the nt boot loader give the choice to boot into
> bsd by using the boot1 -> bootsect.bsd method in boot.ini.

OK.  This is from memory of what I did a year or so ago, so consider it 
an approximate guide. You obviously already know some of it:

1) While you are still in FreeBSD, make a copy of /boot/boot1 on an 
MS-DOS floppy.

2) Use the FreeBSD "fdisk" utility to mark the XP partition as the only 
active partition.  That should get you booting into XP.

3) Copy boot1 from FreeBSD into the root XP directory, and edit XP's 
(hidden) bootloader configuration file to include an entry that points 
to boot1.  While you are at it, give Windows a proper name, such as 
"Windows XP Virus" in the boot menu.

That should be about it.  Details that you will need can mostly be found 
in an old FAQ that explains how to dual boot FreeBSD and Windows NT 
somewhere on the FreeBSD site.  Like maybe here:

http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/disks.html#NT-BOOTLOADER

> 
> What I'm I doing wrong here?
> 

I don't know why you can't get back to XP with the tools you've tried, 
but there is no need to install the FreeBSD boot manager.  XP's loader 
is prettier, so you might as well use it, as described above.  If you 
have already installed the FreeBSD boot manager, you might want to write 
a standard MBR back to the disk and then use the XP loader.

Good luck.

- Bob

> Thanks,
> Joel




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