FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS

Keith Kelly c0d3h4x0r at hotmail.com
Thu Jan 22 16:01:38 PST 2004


No -- no floppy in the floppy drive, and no CD in the CD-ROM drive.  Only 
disk devices attached are the one hard drive, the CD-ROM, and the floppy, 
and in the BIOS boot sequence, only the one hard drive is set as the boot 
device.  I *did* mark the slice I created using fdisk during FreeBSD install 
as bootable, and I *did* have the installer write (I've tried it both ways) 
either a standard MBR or install the BootMgr to the hard drive.  There are 
no other partitions or OSes or anything on the hard drive, but it was 
previously running WinXP and that booted fine.  And just for kicks, I was 
still able to boot off a DOS floppy, format the hard drive as a system 
device and put a minimal DOS install on it, and boot fine off the hard drive 
into DOS.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jerry McAllister" <jerrymc at clunix.cl.msu.edu>
To: "Keith Kelly" <c0d3h4x0r at hotmail.com>
Cc: "Chris Pressey" <cpressey at catseye.mine.nu>; <freebsd-bugs at freebsd.org>; 
<freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 3:35 PM
Subject: Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS


> >
> > Yes, I tried it both ways (installing BootMgr, and installing a standard
> > MBR).
>
> I just thought of one more awful thing which has happened to me
> on a number of occasions, way embarrassingly too many times.
>
> You don't happen to have a floppy disk in the floppy drive or possibly
> a non-bootable CD in the CD drive do you.   That is where I see
> that message most often.  If you tried to install using the two
> floppies, for example and didn't pull the second one out before
> rebooting, it would do that.  The same would be true if you put
> one of the other CDs in the set to load some things.
>
> I'm still guessing something to do with the MBRs and boot blocks
> and whatever you called the 'a' partition in the slice, etc though.
>
> ////jerry
>
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----- 
> > From: "Chris Pressey" <cpressey at catseye.mine.nu>
> > To: "Keith Kelly" <c0d3h4x0r at hotmail.com>
> > Cc: <freebsd-bugs at freebsd.org>; <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
> > Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 2:38 PM
> > Subject: Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from 
> > BIOS
> >
> >
> > > On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 14:24:19 -0800
> > > "Keith Kelly" <c0d3h4x0r at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Thanks for your thoughtful and helpful reply.  I should have given
> > > > more technical details.
> > > >
> > > > I already tried (with both 4.9 and 5.1) letting the FreeBSD install
> > > > proceed with fdisk's  geometry value assumptions, and what I always
> > > > get is a non-bootable hard drive that gives the "Missing operating
> > > > system" error at boot.
> > >
> > > Hi Keith,
> > >
> > > Just to be sure - did you elect to install BootMgr (or a regular boot
> > > record) on the drive when sysinstall asks?
> > >
> > > -Chris
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
> 


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