[from newbies]: XP + FreeBSD

[Andrew L. Gould]

On Mon, 07 Jun 2004 17:59:59 +0000
"clayton rollins" <crollins666 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On June 6, 2004, <David.Annetts at csiro.au> wrote:
> >
> >Hi,
> >
> >This has probably been answered before, but I was unable to find
> >explicit confirmation.
> >
> >The installation guide (2.5.3) states that "You now have the option
> >to install a boot manager. In general, you
> >should choose to install the FreeBSD boot manager if:
> >
> >    *You have more than one drive, and have installed FreeBSD onto a
> >drive other than the first one.
> >    *You have installed FreeBSD alongside another operating system on
> >the same disk, and you want to choose whether to start FreeBSD or the
> >other operating system when you start the compute"
> >
> >Will installing FreeBSD's boot manager render my exisiting XP
> >installation inoperable?  I have been down this route with Linux in
> >the past with the result that my NT partition was unusable after
> >Linux installation.
> >
> >Many thanks,
> >
> >Dave.
> >
> 
> Hi Dave,
> 
> Freebsd-questions is the proper forum for questions; I'm sending my
> answer there as replying on newbies is against the charter. (Also, if
> I make a mistake, it'll get corrected here :).)
> 
> You don't need to subscribe to the list; you should be CC'ed on any
> replies.
> 
> As I understand it, the boot manager allows for one other OS to be
> bootable or for an OS to be booted which is not on the same drive as
> the MBR.
> 
> It should not conflict with XP, afaik, and I've used XP and FreeBSD
> together in the past.
> 
> As a cautionary note, though, I've seen others hang themselves with
> this. (I never figured out what they could have done wrong.) You
> should back up any data from the XP installation you wish to keep, to
> be safe.
> 
> Regards,
> Clayton

The most common mistake I've seen is where users do not mark the XP
partition as bootable during the partition creation step.  I have never
had dual booting problems as long as I:

1. marked both the XP and FreeBSD partitions as bootable;
2. installed the FreeBSD boot loader.

As long as the user does not delete the XP partition (yikes!), the user
can mark it as bootable using /stand/sysinstall after installation is
complete.

Best of luck,

Andrew Gould