Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 22:40:29 -0700 From: Darren Pilgrim <phi@evilphi.com> To: Ivan Voras <ivoras@fer.hr> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: MS Vista vs FreeBSD's bootloader Message-ID: <468349CD.1020302@evilphi.com> In-Reply-To: <46832557.8080902@fer.hr> References: <722528.14010.qm@web32707.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <46832557.8080902@fer.hr>
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Ivan Voras wrote: > pfgshield-freebsd@yahoo.com wrote: >> >> FWIW, if you just got your new computer with Windows Vista >> installed and were hoping to dual boot FreeBSD on it, let me tell >> you that FreeBSD's bootloader will screw things up. >> >> vista doesn't like: >> - bootloaders different than the one used by Vista. >> - Making a non Vista partition active. > > I can confirm this - messing with the boot sector will make Vista > unbootable, but it can be repaired with the installer (of course, you > lose FreeBSD at that point). It seems Vista uses registry or some > other binary format to store boot info (as opposed to WinXP which > uses a text file...) and it protects the boot loader for "DRM" > reasons. This has been SOP at Microsoft for almost a decade. If you want to dual-boot Windows, the solution is to use the established methods for adding additional boot options to the built-in Windows boot-loader. For Vista, this means using the BCDEdit command-line tool to manipulate the Boot Configuration Data in the system registry rather than Notepad to edit boot.ini. BCDEdit and its options are detailed on MSDN: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa468636.aspx A slightly more useful discussion of BCDedit on bsdforums.org: http://www.bsdforums.org/forums/showthread.php?t=48405 It specifies Linux, but this is a tutorial for adding a non-Windows boot option to the Vista Boot Manager: http://port25.technet.com/archive/2006/10/13/Using-Vista_2700_s-Boot-Manager-to-Boot-Linux-and-Dual-Booting-with-BitLocker-Protection-with-TPM-Support.aspx -- Darren Pilgrim
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