Boot and MBR.

[Mark Weisman]

Hey all,
  I've tried setting the MBR within fdisk from the FBSD side of the house, however, it won't set. I go through all the motions, yet when it goes to write it says that it can't write to drsk ad0. I then went into a dos boot using a Windows98 boot disk and made the partition active, it still will not boot into the Windows partition. For the life of me, I cannot think of how to fix this. I need some help, any ideas?

Res Ipsa Loquitor,
Mark-Nathaniel Weisman
Site Master
Mystic_One Internet Gaming Servers
Anchorage, AK
http://games.mystic1.net

> ----------
> From: 	Jud
> Sent: 	Thursday, February 26, 2004 5:49 PM
> To: 	Mark Weisman; Jerry McAllister
> Cc: 	questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: 	Re: Boot and MBR.
> 
> On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 17:18:01 -0900, Mark Weisman <mark at mystic1.net> wrote:
> 
> > Just out of curiosity what is the order in creating a dual boot system?
> > Which operating system do you put on first? I see that having WinXP
> > setup in partitions is not a good idea, yet I'm not aware of how to load
> > the system in just a slice? I would appreciate any and all help in
> > trying to get this thing online. I need my workstation back as soon as
> > possible. Thanks.
> [snip]
> >> I've got my primary drive divided in two partitions, one partition had
> >
> >> WindowsXP and the other has FreeBSD 5.1-Release on it. I had WindowsXP
> >
> >> installed and working until I put FreeBSD on the second partition and
> >> had it take control of the MBR. I know that the other partition is
> >> still bootable if I can get a pointer to it, currently the boot menu
> >> shows it
> >> as:
> >>   F!: ??
> >>   F2: FreeBSD
> >> How can I get that first menu choice to look at the installation on
> > the
> >> first partition as bootable? Making the machine a dual boot between
> > the
> >> two system?
> 
> First off, don't worry about slice vs partition - Jerry was just telling  
> you those are the names used by FreeBSD and Windows, respectively, for the  
> same thing.
> 
> Second, how to get your dual boot going -
> 
> 1. I think if you do what you've already done in FreeBSD (set the Windows  
> slice/partition bootable) and then type "w" to write the change, that  
> should work.
> 
> If it doesn't, two other alternatives -
> 
> 2. If you have a Win9x emergency boot/system floppy hanging around, use  
> fdisk to set the Windows partition/slice active, then reboot; or
> 
> 3. Install GAG, a free, easy and automagical boot loader.  <URL:  
> http://gag.sourceforge.net/>.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> Jud
>