Dual Boot 8.2 and Windows 7

[doug at safeport.com]

On Fri, 24 Jun 2011, Eduardo Morras wrote:

> At 16:36 24/06/2011, doug at safeport.com wrote:
>> Well for me it all worked well for all versions of FreeBSD until Windows 7. 
>> My main purpose was to document the link given to me by a friend who does 
>> user support for a local college. Before Vista the boot process was pretty 
>> simple, the MBR was one sector on sector 0, track 0 and it read the first 
>> sector of the target partition who took it from there.
>> 
>> My experience with FreeBSD 7.0 to present has been that the install does 
>> not work with Windows 7. It appears that the MBR can still only have 4 
>> entries. Windows 7 gets more by using extended partitions. Dell, the there 
>> can be only one and let it be Windows company, uses two small partitions 
>> for something. It may be that some of that underlying stuff is not needed 
>> but I had enough trouble without without making changes at that level.
>
> In Vista the way that Windows start changed. The MBR points to a file inside 
> the Windows partition that have the partition scheme. It's called BCD. You 
> can install EasyBCD in windows (it's freeware with commercial licence) that 
> permits you to start Windows and other OS inside other partitions. I use it 
> in my trial? Win7/FreeBSD8.2/OpenBSD4.9 server and dual Win7/FreeBSD8.2 
> laptop.
>
> http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1
>
>> If FreeBSD can be installed in an extended partition, that would be a very 
>> useful howto.
>
> Don't know about it, perhaps using easybcd you can do that

Perhaps but I could not get FreeBSD in an extended partition. I am using easyBCD 
to do the dual boot. In doing what I did I never distrubed the boot records in 
the partitions. Once I got the MBR and the windows 7 second level boot code 
restored, it all worked as advertised. The trick as outlined in the link to to 
run the process 3 times booting after each time.

_____
Douglas Denault
http://www.safeport.com
doug at safeport.com
Voice: 301-217-9220
   Fax: 301-217-9277