FreeBSD Boot Manager

[Steve Bertrand]

Kurt Buff wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:17 PM, Grant Peel <gpeel at thenetnow.com> wrote:

>> On that drive, there was about 100 GB of free space, so I decided to try putting FreeBSD 6.4 on it.
>>
>> During the install, I opted to use the Free BSD boot manage. The install went flawlessly.

>> Any idea what I might need to do to make windows work again?
>>
>> It may be worth mentioning, I had Norton GoBack running on the disk before I installed FreeBSD, although I am not aware if it does anything to the booting system.

> www.bootdisk.com
> 
> Find a bootable floppy image there that includes a DOS fdisk, and
> write it out to a floppy disk.
> 
> Boot your machine with that floppy, and at the DOS prompt, type 'fdisk
> /mbr' - it will write a standard boot sector, and Windows should boot
> again.
> 
> Of course, this will not allow you to boot to your new FreeBSD
> installation, but with other folks' help, you can probably overcome
> that - probably with GRUB, or another boot manager.

Technically (theoretically) speaking, using a Win32 boot disk to fdisk
/mbr, he should be able to re-initialize the FBSD boot loader by going
through the steps he did initially.

AFAIR, Symantec GoBack, along with many other 'in-disk' restoration
programs, overwrite the boot sector with its own code.

If the OP can boot back into Windows with the fdisk /mbr, he has likely
done both:

- broke his GoBack program's ability to recover, and;
- made it possible to restore the FBSD boot manager

If Windows boots after following Kurt's recommendation of restoring the
Windows MBR, back up your Windows system, then try FreeBSD again.

You sound courageous, give 'er!


Steve