Using the boot-easy boot loader..

[Oliver Fuchs]

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004, Nadav Ben-Ami wrote:

> Hello..
> 
> I am currently running FreeBSD 5.2.1, installing of OS'es is really not 
> a hard task for me, except this one time and it has to do with WINDOWS 
> XP on my primary hardrive (IDE1). Problem is this: Since I am running 
> Windows XP  on my primary C drive, and I goto install the FreeBSD boot 
> easy loader(Option 1), there was a time when by doing just that, It 
> destroyed the MBR of my primary drive! Strange as it may seem, though 
> why would windows xp be destroyed if I tried to install on a separate 
> physical hard drive (D:/) the free bsd boot loader? I am some what 
> "scared" to even bother with a boot loader. Please advise on what I can 
> do to make windows XP allow another OS like FREEBSD to work though its 
> on a separate drive.
> 
> Synopsis of problem: XP installed on primary master (ad0), and freebsd 
> installed taking up whole secondary master drive (ad1), goto install 
> freebsd boot loader... CAN'T BOOT BACK INTO WINDOWS XP, AND ALL IS 
> LOST.. I did not choose install standard MBR, I chose option #1 for 
> install freebsd boot easy loader on drive ad1!!, not ad0!!

Hi,
I am using WindowsME and FreeBSD on two hard drives.
And from what I have seen:
a) to get you original boot setup back again I ran the WindowsME start disk
and on the dos prompt I did a:
fdisk /mbr
This restored my original boot configuration.
b) see the handbook/faq for multibooting with Windows(XP)
c) from FAQ "3.9. Windows 95/98 killed my boot manager! How do I get it
back?":

[...]
You can reinstall the boot manager FreeBSD comes with in one of three ways:
1) Running DOS, go into the tools/ directory of your FreeBSD distribution and look for
bootinst.exe. You run it like so:
...\TOOLS> bootinst.exe boot.bin
and the boot manager will be reinstalled.
2) Boot the FreeBSD boot floppy again and go to the Custom installation menu item. Choose
Partition. Select the drive which used to contain your boot manager (likely the first
one) and when you come to the partition editor for it, as the very first thing (e.g.
do not make any changes) select (W)rite. This will ask for confirmation, say yes, and
when you get the Boot Manager selection prompt, be sure to select ``Boot Manager''.
This will re-write the boot manager to disk. Now quit out of the installation menu and
reboot off the hard disk as normal.
3) Boot the FreeBSD boot floppy (or CDROM) and choose the ``Fixit'' menu item. Select
either the Fixit floppy or CDROM #2 (the ``live'' filesystem option) as appropriate
and enter the fixit shell. Then execute the following command:
Fixit# fdisk -B -b /boot/boot0 bootdevice
substituting bootdevice for your real boot device such as ad0 (first IDE disk), ad4
(first IDE disk on auxiliary controller), da0 (first SCSI disk), etc.
[...}

d) next time you do your bootloader setup be sure to choose the first
drive to put your bootloader to.

Oliver
-- 
... don't touch the bang bang fruit