Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 12:24:10 -0400 (EDT) From: "Jasper O'Malley" <jooji@nickelkid.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Active partition problems with FreeBSD 4.0/NT dual-boot Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0006091158460.32719-100000@cornflake.nickelkid.com>
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I have a completely aggravating problem on my hand. I've got NT 4.0 installed on a the first partition (NTFS) on da0, and FreeBSD 4.0 installed on the first partition of da1. When I installed FreeBSD, I instructed it to install a bootloader on da1, but not da0, with the intention of allowing NTLDR handle the OS selection. After installation, I FTPed /boot/boot0 to another box (since I don't have any FAT partitions on my machine) and rebooted. I got the NTLDR screen, booted into NT, FTPed boot0 back to the NTFS partition, renamed it bootsect.bsd, and added the following line to C:\boot.ini: C:\BOOTSECT.BSD="FreeBSD 4.0" When I rebooted, I selected "FreeBSD 4.0" from the list, and got the FreeBSD loader with a single option: F5 Drive 1 I hit F5, and got a second loader menu: F1 FreeBSD F5 Drive 0 I hit F1 to boot into FreeBSD, and I thought all was well. However, when I rebooted to get back into NT, I was presented with the following error message: Not found any [active partition] in HDD I booted from a Win98 startup floppy, used fdisk to set the first partition on da0 active, and rebooted again. This time, I was presented with the following loader menu: F1 ?? F5 Drive 1 I thought this was weird, since I never explicitly installed the FreeBSD loader onto da0. Pressing F1 brought me to the NTLDR screen, as I expected, and I was able to boot into NT again. When I rebooted, I got the save loader menu again, and this time I hit F5, then F1 to boot into FreeBSD. Upon a reboot, bam, back to: Not found any [active partition] in HDD After doing some reading, I'm guessing the problem is that I've a brain-dead Award BIOS variant on my GA-686LX4 motherboard that assumes you're using an M$ OS and checks for active partitions on the lowest numbered BIOS disk present (da0, in this case) before it hands control over to any MBR bootloader. If there aren't any active partitions, the BIOS craps out with the above error. Now, for the questions: 1) How did the FreeBSD loader find its way onto the MBR of da0? It obviously wasn't there before I selected "FreeBSD 4.0" from the NTLDR menu the first time, but it seems that it's been there ever since. Is this by design? 2) Is there any way to keep whatever is clearing the "active" flag on the first partition of da0 from doing so? I tried upgrading the BIOS for the motherboard to the latest version, but the active partition checking "feature" is still present. Thanks, Mick To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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