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Date:      Sat, 10 Jun 2000 19:03:35 +0100
From:      Mark Ovens <mark@ukug.uk.freebsd.org>
To:        "Jasper O'Malley" <jooji@nickelkid.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: REVISED: Active partition problems with FreeBSD 4.0/NT dual-boot
Message-ID:  <20000610190335.G233@parish>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0006101333510.43612-100000@cornflake.nickelkid.com>; from jooji@nickelkid.com on Sat, Jun 10, 2000 at 01:40:23PM -0400
References:  <20000610170801.F233@parish> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0006101333510.43612-100000@cornflake.nickelkid.com>

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On Sat, Jun 10, 2000 at 01:40:23PM -0400, Jasper O'Malley wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Jun 2000, Mark Ovens wrote:
> 
> > So when you re-installed NT it wrote a new PT to the MBR, which is
> > actually boot0?
> 
> Yep. The only thing I'm not still sure of is how boot0 found its way onto
> the MBR of da0 in the first place. I never explicitly installed it; all I
> did was run boot0 (as C:\BOOTSECT.BSD) out of the NTLDR menu once, and
> it seems that it wrote itself into the MBR then.
> 

Yes that's what I said right at the start. Even though you ran boot0
as C:\BOOTSECT.BSD when you had selected an OS to boot, it sets (in
theory) the active flag on that partition (in memory) and then writes
itself to the MBR (so it can "remember" which was the last OS booted).
The fact that you hadn't used sysinstall to install it meant that had
a NULL partition table. It doesn't read the one from the MBR (probably
because it assumes *it* is running from there already).

> > I think that's why we've both seen the same "no active partition"
> > problem. I too have an Award BIOS (4.51PGM) on a Gigabyte m/b
> > (GA-586TX3). The term "brain-dead BIOS" in your original post seems to
> > be spot-on :)
> 
> Ayup, sounds about right.
> 
> > The only thing I can suggest now, other than getting a new m/b, is to
> > put / on da0 and /usr, /var, and swap on da1. This is the way
> > mine is setup and it works fine.
> 
> That's a good suggestion. I'll most likely end up installing a third-party
> boot loader, however.
> 
> Cheers,
> Mick
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
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	Get rid of that excess FAT - install FreeBSD
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