Hi Roelof,
On 09/10/2005, at 3:02 AM, Roelof Wobben wrote:
When install Openbsd after XP i get a problem regarding the install
instructions.
You need to be specific if you want people to be capable of helping you.
But when i first install Openbsd and then XP i think XP is not
working well
because i heard that XP wants to have the first partition.
XP does not have to have the first partition, although it does like to
see the partitions numbered sequentially in the partition table in the
order the partitions are actually found on the disk. This won't bite you
until you run Disk Management in XP, when it will change the partition
table numbering to be sequential without even asking you.
If you have XP in the first partition (1st on disk and as the 1st in the
partition table), then installing OpenBSD to the 2nd should not cause a
problem. I use Smart Boot Manager to choose between XP and OpenBSD.
If you have XP in the first partition (1st on disk and as the 1st in the
partition table), but it is near the end of the disk and you will be
installing OpenBSD in free space before that partition, but as partition
2, then XP will no longer be able to find system files at boot time
because it is brain dead and counts partitions as where they actually
are on the disk, instead of where the partition table says the
appropriate partition is. Edit boot.ini to fix this. If you run Disk
Management at some stage in the future, Microsoft will ruin your day
again and you might wonder what the hell happened (it will re-order the
partition table to be reflect what partitions are found on disk in the
order that they are found).
If you create an unused partition 1 at the beginning of the disk, and
then install XP after that in partition 2, you might be able to later
install OpenBSD in partition 1 without any further trouble. I can't
remember if the XP installer allows installing to a partition other
that the first, but it can certainly be changed later.
None of my dual boot OpenBSD/XP or FreeBSD/XP machines have XP in the
first partition.
Shane J Pearson
