FreeBSD and Win2k Dual Boot problem

Mega Man X · 04-14-2004, 02:30 AM

Oh yeah, about your question, I've not tried Lilo(well, yeah, with Slack), but I will take a look at it now. Thanks for the hint

Marble · 04-14-2004, 03:01 AM

I don't know the source of your problem, but that missing NTLDR is a windows issue.

Mega Man X · 04-14-2004, 04:27 AM

yup. It seems that FreeBSD, for some reason, is overwriting the windows boot loader (NTLDR). I've found an article in swedish explaining how to boot FreeBSD with Windows XP boot loader NTLDR. That would be really great, since I can choose "none" to FreeBSD's boot loader and let XP/2k to do the job. This, if works with Linux as well, is a great thing in case you need to remove your distribution, say, to try a new one, and is afraid of messing up the boot record as I just did...

I've not tried it myself, since I've removed Win2k. If anyone is interested on the article I can make a rough translation of it.

Thanks again for the replies guys!

Cheers!

Mega Man X · 04-15-2004, 03:04 PM

Just to let you guys up-to-date, I am dual booting FreeBSD 5.2.1 and Slackware 9.0 without a problem. I've installed first Slack on the first slice and lilo on MBR, then FreeBSD. I even let FreeBSD installs it's boot loader and I can choose either Linux or FreeBSD during boot time... To my astonishment, choosing Linux, calls Lilo, so FreeBSD was not really overwriting the MBR. It really was something weird with Windows 2000 boot loader and FreeBSD... Though, I never had problems with Win2k and Slack, so then again, it was weird

itismike · 04-25-2004, 07:48 AM

I had similar trouble dual-booting win2K and mandrake 10. It was suggested in the boot loader forum here that the boot.ini in the windows root directory needs to be edited. Why I don't really understand...I can't imagine that Linux or GAG would try to edit the file themselves...
-Mike

Mega Man X · 05-01-2004, 04:33 PM

Thanks itismike!!!

I've not been trying FBSD for a while, been a little busy, so I was not checking this forum Good to know that it was not only me having that issue. Thanks for sharing

. This is quite weird and interesting actually

. I will try to look at the boot.ini when I install win2k again. Strange...

itismike · 05-02-2004, 01:56 AM

Your very welcome, Megaman. I sure have learned my lesson. It'll be a cold day in hell before I dual-boot a single hard drive. From now on I'm using a boot floppy to send the boot loader to the other (Linux) partition or maybe I'll try to learn the syntax for Windows boot loader. Grub, LILO and GAG are not welcome on my boot sector!

mrcheeks · 05-02-2004, 02:52 AM

NTLDR disappearing can be a service pack fault or a virus or something else. a floppy boot disk + a cdrom allows you to copy NTLDR from the cd to the win disk with the expand function if i remember. When i was dual booting freebsd and win i had this problem only once and it was after service pack installation...

Manadien · 05-04-2004, 12:39 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Megaman X
LOL, no, still no go. I've then installed Win2k, then FreeBSD. This time, win2k is set as NTFS. When I got into the prompt screen to boot:

F1 = ??
F2 = DOS
F3 = FreeBSD

When you had Win2k did you have it split into two drives (C: and D)? If you did you would need to select F1 to boot into windows. Hitting F2 would have been passing the boot process to your D: drive which would have not had the boot files (boot.ini, ntldr.exe, etc). Also if the D: drive was formatted as FAT32 that is why it shows up as DOS, NTFS paritions usually give you the ?? like in the F1.

rehab junkie · 05-16-2004, 10:04 PM

From the FreeBSD FAQ: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...#NT-BOOTLOADER

9.10. How can I use the NT loader to boot FreeBSD?

The general idea is that you copy the first sector of your native root FreeBSD partition into a file in the DOS/NT partition. Assuming you name that file something like c:\bootsect.bsd (inspired by c:\bootsect.dos), you can then edit the c:\boot.ini file to come up with something like this:

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows NT"
C:\BOOTSECT.BSD="FreeBSD"
C:\="DOS"

If FreeBSD is installed on the same disk as the NT boot partition simply copy /boot/boot1 to C:\BOOTSECT.BSD. However, if FreeBSD is installed on a different disk /boot/boot1 will not work, /boot/boot0 is needed.

/boot/boot0 needs to be installed using sysinstall by selecting the FreeBSD boot manager on the screen which asks if you wish to use a boot manager. This is because /boot/boot0 has the partition table area filled with NULL characters but sysinstall copies the partition table before copying /boot/boot0 to the MBR.

Warning: Do not simply copy /boot/boot0 instead of /boot/boot1; you will overwrite your partition table and render your computer un-bootable!

When the FreeBSD boot manager runs it records the last OS booted by setting the active flag on the partition table entry for that OS and then writes the whole 512-bytes of itself back to the MBR so if you just copy /boot/boot0 to C:\BOOTSECT.BSD then it writes an empty partition table, with the active flag set on one entry, to the MBR.

rehab junkie · 05-16-2004, 10:06 PM

From the above it would seem infinitely simpler to use the NT bootloader than FreeBSD's.

rehab junkie · 05-18-2004, 11:07 PM

Hmm. Out of curiosity I tried shrinking my NTFS W2K partition on a disk to one half, installing FreeBSD 5.2.1-release on the other half, and letting the boot loader decide what to do. It worked first go with no further configuration required.

Now I have a second installation of FreeBSD

SlackerLX · 12-17-2004, 12:46 PM

I recommend using GAG v.4 for multiboot. Always warks for me

cyto · 12-17-2004, 04:58 PM

Hey megamanx. I can't help u, sorry. But i will be watching this thread closely. Because i am going to install in my real pc in few months. Dual boot with windows xp and freebsd 5.3 in my SATA hardrive(250gb). So if u find a solution dont forget to post it here, so it will be useful for other noobs like me. Thanks a lot!

Out of curiousity, R u swedish? Because u said that u will translate swedish webpage if anyone need. Sorry i couldn't resist it.

Cheers.

Mega Man X · 12-17-2004, 05:30 PM

Hi there cyto!

Great to see you sticking with FreeBSD. Well, actually, I never tried dual booting FreeBSD with Win2K again after this (or dual booting FreeBSD with any other OS for that matter). I simply decided to dedicate a machine to FreeBSD exclusively instead(old machine, but still works fine). This thread was possibly the last time I've tried FreeBSD before I gave up. Now I'm back into it again.

I'd love to try dual booting FreeBSD with WinXP to see if the results are different. I might get some time around Xmas or so... hopefully

.

What I'd recommend you is to backup all your data before installing FreeBSD/WinXP. I don't keep anything important in one of my machines which I use only for testing *nix. It's like a hobby of mine, besides playing games. LOL.

And I really am from Sweden as you guessed, ghehe. I'd ratter fix my profile someday

.