Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2004 15:05:04 -0800 (PST) From: Dan Strick <strick@covad.net> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Cc: dan@mist.nodomain Subject: Re: FreeBSD BOOT Message-ID: <200402062305.i16N54W2000840@mist.nodomain>
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>> > Hi... i have the FreeBSD and Windows XP in my computer.... my the > windows had removed my FreeBSD boot ... > Anyone know how to boot in freebsd and restore the boot sector? No MBR!!! >> I assume you mean that you first installed FreeBSD in one disk slice (i.e. MBR partition) and then installed WinXP in another slice and after installing WinXP you discovered that your system always boots WinXP and doesn't offer you the option of booting FreeBSD instead. This is because the WinXP installation replaced the FreeBSD bootstrap program in the MBR sector of the disk drive. There is a messy way of configuring XP to give you the option of booting FreeBSD but it is easier to just reinstall the standard FreeBSD master bootstrap program. If you have (or can make) the live file system CD for a recent release of FreeBSD (from the file ...-i386-disc2.iso), boot the installation floppy or CD for that release, go into fixit mode using the live file system CD, and issue the command boot0cfg -B ad0 where "ad0" is the disk on which you installed both FreeBSD and WinXP. If you don't have the live file system CD, instead of going into fixit mode you can select the "custom installation" menu option and then select the menu option for allocating disk space for FreeBSD (i.e. the option for editing MBR partition tables). Select the disk drive on which you previously installed FreeBSD and WinXP. Verify that the MBR partition table that it fetches from the disk drive is correct and issue the undocumented "W" command. Then exit the installation procedure without doing an installation and reboot. Dan Strick strick@covad.net
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