FreeBSD-10.2-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img kills every Windows it touch

[Rostislav Krasny]

There is no GPT parser in Windows XP because XP doesn't support it. Windows
7 supports it and dies differently. But why to use GPT in the installation
stick in the first place? You don't use any advantage of GPT and on old
hardware even can't use GPT during boot but its MBR compatibility. That's
obvious that XP and 7 have some epic bugs with GPT, but why to trigger them
if you can use MBR? After all you need only one partition for the FreeBSD
installation files. MBR does this job perfectly.

BTW why FreeBSD installation files resides in the second partition of GPT
(/dev/da0p2)? Maybe this is the trigger of the Windows bug? As far as I
know at least XP doesn't support more than one MBR partition on an USB
stick.

On Sat, Nov 14, 2015 at 12:19 PM, Florian Ermisch <0xf10e at fsfe.org> wrote:

> The GPT message is nothing to worry about, that's normal with an image
> smaller than the underlying disk.
> The image might trigger a bug in M$'s GPT parser though. 2004ish there was
> a small bug in the installer of Mandrake Linux rendering a otherwise fine
> disk unusable for Windows XP so I wouldn't be too surprised.
>
> Regards, Florian
>
> Am 14. November 2015 01:09:16 MEZ, schrieb Rostislav Krasny <
> rosti.bsd at gmail.com>:
> > I've installed FreeBSD 10.2 from CD and successfully mounted this
> > stick
> > (/dev/da0p2).
> > At least in FreeBSD it doesn't make any problem. Before I mounted it
> > there
> > was some messages on the consle. You can see the screenshot there:
> > http://oi67.tinypic.com/351yiqd.jpg
> > On the last line of that message it says that: "the secondary GPT
> > header is
> > not in the last LBA".
> >
> > Then I repartitioned (with MBR schema) and reformatted it and voila it
> > works properly on Windows as before FreeBSD. So there is no hardware
> > problem with this stick, for sure.
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Nov 14, 2015 at 1:16 AM, Florian Ermisch <0xf10e at fsfe.org>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Rostislav,
> > >
> > > did you verify it's the image and not the stick?
> > > I've seen a USB-headset and a Dell USB-kbd with integrated
> > > smartcard-reader pulling of such a stunt. Both were used on windows
> > > machines before and then suddenly started crashing them.
> > >
> > > Regards, Florian
> > >
> > > Am 13. November 2015 23:10:59 MEZ, schrieb Rostislav Krasny <
> > > rosti.bsd at gmail.com>:
> > > > Hi there,
> > > >
> > > > You might not belive me but it really does. I just flashed the
> > > > FreeBSD-10.2-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img installation image on a 2GB
> > > > disk on
> > > > key using Rufus 2.5. Rufus is a Windows program that support
> > flashing
> > > > img
> > > > files into USB disk on key in DD mode (like the dd(1) program).
> > Now
> > > > every
> > > > time I connect this disk on key into my old computer with Windows
> > XP
> > > > it
> > > > reboots instantly. First time it rebooted right after Rufus
> > finished
> > > > the
> > > > flashing. If I connect it into my Dell Latitude E7440 laptop with
> > > > Windows 7
> > > > there is a BSOD. There was no such reboot with this disk on key
> > before
> > > > I
> > > > flashed it with the FreeBSD-10.2-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img
> > > >
> > > > What is going on here? What did you put into this image file?
> > > >
> > > > P.S. I've checked the MD5 hash of the image file and it's the same
> > to
> > > > the
> > > > official MD5 hash in www.freebsd.org/releases/10.2R/announce.html
> > As
> > > > far as
> > > > I remember I downloaded the image file from the official German
> > > > FreeBSD
> > > > mirror.
> > > > _______________________________________________
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> > >
> > >
>
>