Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 15:59:42 +1100 From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au> To: bde@zeta.org.au, rgrimes@GndRsh.aac.dev.com Cc: current@freefall.freebsd.org, darrylo@sr.hp.com, jkh@time.cdrom.com Subject: Re: 2.2-ALPHA install failure Message-ID: <199611250459.PAA17951@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
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>> >Dedicating one drive, does not mean dedicating all drives, Microsoft's >> >install procedures are known for there ``I want the whole world'' phylosophy >> >and can cause people great pain if installed with on another disk in >> >the same systems as one of the FreeBSD ``bogus'' partitioned disks. >> >> Surely this is only caused by a installer error? I haven't used W95, >> but older versions of W can be installed in any directory on any hard >> disk and don't seem to touch other disks or directories (except for the >> usual things in the root directory). > >No, this is not a user error, this is the automagic of Windows 95 and >the design of the Microsoft installation tools. If it finds unclaimed >disk space per the MBR it will claim it, fdisk it, and format it for >you, all without asking you if it is okay to do this. This may have >been fixed in Win95/SR2. Bust surely it only installs on the drive(s) that you tell it to? >I have shipped 100's of systems with ``dedicated disks'' and every single >one of them had a valid MBR as far as start and size. Every OS I have >seen and worked with obey these two parameters, infact they favor them >over the start CHS, end CHS. I am not so concerned about bogus C/H/S >values in the MBR as I am about start/size values. Except W95. It doesn't honor the start and size parameters. A start of 0 places the MBR inside the slice. This should prevent all OS's except the one in the slice from modifying the MBR. A size of 1 should work just as well as a size of 50000. I don't know of any fdisks that actually honor a 0 start. This shows that a 0 start is invalid. Bruce
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