Adding a XP disk to FreeBSD machine

[Nikola Lecic]

On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 14:22:05 -0700
Garrett Cooper <youshi10 at u.washington.edu> wrote:

> >>> Garrett Cooper <youshi10 at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> >>>> 1. All windows disks must be primary if you're going to boot off
> >>>> of them -- sorry, it's a stupid requirement that M$ setup a long
> >>>> time
> >>>>         
> >>> Nikola Lecic wrote:
> >>> What do you mean? I think he asked about slave (primary I
> >>> suppose). I ask this because ...
> 
> Garrett Cooper wrote:
> Now that I think about it I don't think that there's anything wrong
> as long as the boot order doesn't change. This is simple to modify
> with SATA/SCSI, but PATA is statically set based on the jumper pins.
> 
> Once you change the boot order, things change in the OS in terms of
> how the registry mapped entries, programs found their way around,
> etc, and it breaks everything.

Ok, clear, that's why I asked.

> Nikola Lecic wrote: 
> >>> ... "windows" can normally boot from slave position without
> >>> bootloader, (in some cases with help of 'boot.ini' and
> >>> ntldr/ntdetect.com, but AFAIK only if booting is impossible even
> >>> when ad1 (D) is selected in BIOS as the first boot choice).
> 
> Garrett Cooper wrote:       
> Yes. Drive lettering gets tricky though, based on what partitions
> were active when stuff was installed, etc, because Nikola's first
                                                     ^^^^^^^
                                                     Rico's

(you're answering my question, disk is Rico's :))

> NTFS/FAT formatted partition could have been C:, not D:, etc. *sighs
> and shakes head at bad partitioner in 2k/xp/2k3 installer*.

> > Nikola Lecic wrote:
> > I said that it's _possible_ to keep the second disk stay untouched
> > (as it remained after xp installation). I replied because (1)+(3) of
> > Garrett's e-mail implied (maybe, that's why I asked him a question)
> > that xp cannot start from the second disk without _separate_
> > bootloader installed _there_ from the outside, which is not true.
> >
> > My statement doesn't say anything about contents of the first disk
> > and doesn't negate any of the options you proposed.
> >
> > I did add two things:
> >
> >   (a) a proposition to check ad1 separately -- doesn't hurt;
> >
> >   (b) a possible help if xp cannot orientate itself.
> >
> > Nikola Lečić
> >   
>
> Garrett Cooper wrote:
>     The reasoning used in this document is the basis for my previous 
> statement:
> 
>     http://support.microsoft.com/kb/112019
> 
>     So as long as the boot ordering or disk ordering of the primary 
> (Windows) disk doesn't change, things should be groovy.

I assumed that Rico just added primary slave as such, without changing.
Once upon a time I experienced that xp even then refused to boot (in
similar situation) without ntdetect.com.

Nikola Lečić