From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Dec 8 01:17:01 1995 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id BAA13630 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 8 Dec 1995 01:17:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.eskimo.com (root@mail.eskimo.com [204.122.16.4]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id BAA13619 for ; Fri, 8 Dec 1995 01:16:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from eskimo.com (dpk@eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mail.eskimo.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id BAA24553 for ; Fri, 8 Dec 1995 01:16:51 -0800 Date: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 01:16:51 -0800 (PST) From: David Kirchner To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Western Digital boot failures Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk I have re-installed FreeBSD 2.1.0 about 4 times now and I still cannot figure out how to get it to boot. My drive is an 850MB EIDE drive by Western Digital and I am using the 'other OS compatibility' option. It has two small unused partitions around it in the partitioning table editor. When I use the standard MBR (not the 'booteasy') option it will say "Missing operating system" whether I set the partition active or not. When I use the booteasy option, I keep hitting F1 over and over, nothing ever happens other than repeating the "BSD F?" banner. Also, about the set active option, it doesn't always stay set after I quit or write. Booting off the 'boot.flp' floppy and typing 'hd(1,a)/kernel' or any variation of the above, including 'wd(1,a)/kernel' will not work. The hd() one causes "Error: C:0 H:0 S:0" over and over, and the other way will just crash and require reboot. I hope I am not the only one with this problem and that you may have a solution, your online help doesn't help much. =-( Also, a suggestion. In your step-by-step example for novice installation, you didn't explain the boot manager vs. MBR vs. none of the above choices. It skips that unfortunately, maybe if it was there this would work and I wouldn't be wasting your time. Anyway, thanks for your help. -- David Kirchner -- Soon to be powered by FreeBSD (I hope) -- -- dpk@eskimo.com -- http://www.eskimo.com/~dpk/ --