Re: MBR blown away
--- Jerry McAllister [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Jerry McAllister [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I added a slice to a single hard drive dual-boot (windows) system and now I guess that scrambled my MBR. I get three options from the FreeBSD (5.4) boot manager: 1. DOS 2. FreeBSD 3. FreeBSD I can boot to FreeBSD (the new slice is fine) by choosing option 3 but the windows/dos option is fried. The MBR itself looks OK. According to that piece of menu you posted, you just added another bootable slice. So, there are now two bootable FreeBSD slices and one bootable Microsloth slice. Correct, I chose '1' and then the system hangs (no messages/errors). I simply converted a 6GB FAT32 partition into a UFS2 slice (chopped into three 2GB partitions). Well, I still am guessing the problem lies in individual slices' boot sectors and not the MBR. just try and set the bootable flags in the slices the way you think they should be and see what happens. In sysinstall I toggle bootable but it puts an 'A' which seems to mean auto-bootable. I can only set one 'A' here. -- Peter __ Find your next car at http://autos.yahoo.ca ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MBR blown away
Peter wrote: --- Jerry McAllister [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Jerry McAllister [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I added a slice to a single hard drive dual-boot (windows) system and now I guess that scrambled my MBR. I get three options from the FreeBSD (5.4) boot manager: 1. DOS 2. FreeBSD 3. FreeBSD I can boot to FreeBSD (the new slice is fine) by choosing option 3 but the windows/dos option is fried. The MBR itself looks OK. According to that piece of menu you posted, you just added another bootable slice. So, there are now two bootable FreeBSD slices and one bootable Microsloth slice. Correct, I chose '1' and then the system hangs (no messages/errors). I simply converted a 6GB FAT32 partition into a UFS2 slice (chopped into three 2GB partitions). Well, I still am guessing the problem lies in individual slices' boot sectors and not the MBR. just try and set the bootable flags in the slices the way you think they should be and see what happens. In sysinstall I toggle bootable but it puts an 'A' which seems to mean auto-bootable. I can only set one 'A' here. -- Peter I tend to agree with Jerry and others that the problem is not with the MBR, but with the Windows boot sector in the first partition. If that's true, you can't fix it with sysintall or FreeBSD. You have fix it with Windows tools. If you were running Windows 2000 or XP in the Windows partition, I would recommend that you use the Windows 2000 System Recovery Console and run the fixboot program to install a new Windows boot sector on the Windows partition. If you're running an older version of Windows, you need to find out what tool it uses to restore a boot sector. Chances are in the process you'll wipe out the FreBSD MBR which you'll have to fix using FreeBSD. I guess that's where boot0cfg comes in, but I've never used it. The best advice, though, is to backup everything you can before proceeding. -- Ken Stevenson Allen-Myland Inc. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MBR blown away
I need help. I added a slice to a single hard drive dual-boot (windows) system and now I guess that scrambled my MBR. I get three options from the FreeBSD (5.4) boot manager: 1. DOS 2. FreeBSD 3. FreeBSD I can boot to FreeBSD (the new slice is fine) by choosing option 3 but the windows/dos option is fried. The MBR itself looks OK. According to that piece of menu you posted, you just added another bootable slice. So, there are now two bootable FreeBSD slices and one bootable Microsloth slice. Are you saying that the MS slice will no longer boot if you select '1' from the menu?If that is the case, it is not the MBR that was messed up. It is something in the MS slice - probably their boot sector. I don't even pretend to know how MS sets up theirs if it is any different from FreeBSD. But, the MBR is doing what it is supposed to do. It discovers all the bootable slices and makes a menu and transfers control to the selected slice. What happens after that is not the problem of the MBR. That may be bad news, I suppose. It might be easier to fix the MBR than the MS slice boot code if it is actually messed up. It might be as simple as you managed to mark the MS slice as not bootable in some way, but in that case, I wouldn't expect the MBR to be able to see that slice and put it in the menu as bootable. Did you use some utility to shrink the original two slices to fit in the new one? Or was there already unused space (previously unallocated) that you were using?Maybe the utility you used to shrink the other slices messed something up.You might need to go back to it and check it out. Was the MS slice an NTFS type file system? Many of the free utilities for resizing slices do not work properly on NTFS systems. So, it is possible, in that case, that the MS slice was not shrunk properly and so it got trashed at that stage. Just some thing to consider. Good luck, jerry My current strategy is to use boot0cfg: # boot0cfg -B But I'm a little squeemish. I don't want to be locked out of FreeBSD (I barely use Windows but I still would like it back for Visio). Any guidance? As per my comments above, I don't think rewriting the MBR will help any. /jrm -- Peter __ Find your next car at http://autos.yahoo.ca ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MBR blown away
Jerry McAllister wrote: I need help. I added a slice to a single hard drive dual-boot (windows) system and now I guess that scrambled my MBR. I get three options from the FreeBSD (5.4) boot manager: 1. DOS 2. FreeBSD 3. FreeBSD I can boot to FreeBSD (the new slice is fine) by choosing option 3 but the windows/dos option is fried. The MBR itself looks OK. According to that piece of menu you posted, you just added another bootable slice. So, there are now two bootable FreeBSD slices and one bootable Microsloth slice. Are you saying that the MS slice will no longer boot if you select '1' from the menu?If that is the case, it is not the MBR that was messed up. It is something in the MS slice - probably their boot sector. I don't even pretend to know how MS sets up theirs if it is any different from FreeBSD. But, the MBR is doing what it is supposed to do. It discovers all the bootable slices and makes a menu and transfers control to the selected slice. What happens after that is not the problem of the MBR. That may be bad news, I suppose. It might be easier to fix the MBR than the MS slice boot code if it is actually messed up. It might be as simple as you managed to mark the MS slice as not bootable in some way, but in that case, I wouldn't expect the MBR to be able to see that slice and put it in the menu as bootable. Did you use some utility to shrink the original two slices to fit in the new one? Or was there already unused space (previously unallocated) that you were using?Maybe the utility you used to shrink the other slices messed something up.You might need to go back to it and check it out. Was the MS slice an NTFS type file system? Many of the free utilities for resizing slices do not work properly on NTFS systems. So, it is possible, in that case, that the MS slice was not shrunk properly and so it got trashed at that stage. Just some thing to consider. Good luck, jerry My current strategy is to use boot0cfg: # boot0cfg -B But I'm a little squeemish. I don't want to be locked out of FreeBSD (I barely use Windows but I still would like it back for Visio). Any guidance? As per my comments above, I don't think rewriting the MBR will help any. /jrm -- Peter Hi, Just out of curiosity, did you try using sysinstall again to take a look at things? Maybe you can mark your Windows partition bootable? Trying this might at least tell you whether your Windows slice is fried or not. I know I seem to have some sort of trouble along these lines every time I do a fresh install because I'm always trying to run so many different systems on one machine. Windows just doesn't play nice. But so far I have always been able to get things straightened out. --Duane ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MBR blown away
--- Jerry McAllister [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I need help. I added a slice to a single hard drive dual-boot (windows) system and now I guess that scrambled my MBR. I get three options from the FreeBSD (5.4) boot manager: 1. DOS 2. FreeBSD 3. FreeBSD I can boot to FreeBSD (the new slice is fine) by choosing option 3 but the windows/dos option is fried. The MBR itself looks OK. According to that piece of menu you posted, you just added another bootable slice. So, there are now two bootable FreeBSD slices and one bootable Microsloth slice. The thing is, I never ran the boot manager after changing the (existing FAT32) windows partition to a FreeBSD slice. The boot manager config would be the same and so it continues to list DOS as a bootable partition when it is/may not. Are you saying that the MS slice will no longer boot if you select '1' from the menu?If that is the case, it is not the MBR that was messed up. Correct, I chose '1' and then the system hangs (no messages/errors). It is something in the MS slice - probably their boot sector. I don't even pretend to know how MS sets up theirs if it is any different from FreeBSD. But, the MBR is doing what it is supposed to do. It discovers all the bootable slices and makes a menu and transfers control to the selected slice. What happens after that is not the problem of the MBR. I don't think the MBR discovers anything. It is pre-defined to just point to the bootable partitions. And it is the boot manager that creates the menu probably by looking at the MBR. AFAIK, the boot manager must be explicitly instructed to do that (sysintall must provide this instruction during a full install). Did you use some utility to shrink the original two slices to fit in the new one? Or was there already unused space (previously unallocated) that you were using? I simply converted a 6GB FAT32 partition into a UFS2 slice (chopped into three 2GB partitions). -- Peter __ Find your next car at http://autos.yahoo.ca ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MBR blown away
--- Jerry McAllister [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I need help. I added a slice to a single hard drive dual-boot (windows) system and now I guess that scrambled my MBR. I get three options from the FreeBSD (5.4) boot manager: 1. DOS 2. FreeBSD 3. FreeBSD I can boot to FreeBSD (the new slice is fine) by choosing option 3 but the windows/dos option is fried. The MBR itself looks OK. According to that piece of menu you posted, you just added another bootable slice. So, there are now two bootable FreeBSD slices and one bootable Microsloth slice. The thing is, I never ran the boot manager after changing the (existing FAT32) windows partition to a FreeBSD slice. The boot manager config would be the same and so it continues to list DOS as a bootable partition when it is/may not. Are you saying that the MS slice will no longer boot if you select '1' from the menu?If that is the case, it is not the MBR that was messed up. Correct, I chose '1' and then the system hangs (no messages/errors). It is something in the MS slice - probably their boot sector. I don't even pretend to know how MS sets up theirs if it is any different from FreeBSD. But, the MBR is doing what it is supposed to do. It discovers all the bootable slices and makes a menu and transfers control to the selected slice. What happens after that is not the problem of the MBR. I don't think the MBR discovers anything. It is pre-defined to just point to the bootable partitions. And it is the boot manager that creates the menu probably by looking at the MBR. AFAIK, the boot manager must be explicitly instructed to do that (sysintall must provide this instruction during a full install). Did you use some utility to shrink the original two slices to fit in the new one? Or was there already unused space (previously unallocated) that you were using? I simply converted a 6GB FAT32 partition into a UFS2 slice (chopped into three 2GB partitions). Well, I still am guessing the problem lies in individual slices' boot sectors and not the MBR. just try and set the bootable flags in the slices the way you think they should be and see what happens. jerry -- Peter __ Find your next car at http://autos.yahoo.ca ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MBR blown away
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 21:19:07 -0500 (EST) From: Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: MBR blown away To: freebsd-questions freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 I need help. I added a slice to a single hard drive dual-boot (windows) system and now I guess that scrambled my MBR. I get three options from the FreeBSD (5.4) boot manager: 1. DOS 2. FreeBSD 3. FreeBSD I can boot to FreeBSD (the new slice is fine) by choosing option 3 but the windows/dos option is fried. My current strategy is to use boot0cfg: # boot0cfg -B But I'm a little squeemish. I don't want to be locked out of FreeBSD (I barely use Windows but I still would like it back for Visio). Any guidance? Start by making a full backup of your FreeBSD installation. Then you'll feel less squeamish about whatever you do next. Jim ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MBR blown away
Peter wrote: I need help. I added a slice to a single hard drive dual-boot (windows) system and now I guess that scrambled my MBR. I get three options from the FreeBSD (5.4) boot manager: 1. DOS 2. FreeBSD 3. FreeBSD I would think that the appearance of the above menu, and the fact that it functions correctly when you choose FreeBSD indicates that the MBR is intact. I would presume, then, that the Windows partition has been damaged. If the file system the Windows partition is healty in general with just a few files in the boot sequence being damaged or missing you should be able to re-install Windows in that partition and find all your data and applications present and in good shape. If however the filesystem in the Windows partition is messed up you may have lost everything. If you do re-install windows it will probably replace the MBR that is there with what Windows consideres to be a 'standard' MBR. I think you can use dd to copy the MBR that is currently there. Then to get back to FreeBSD you'll have to use fdisk to set the active partition to FreeBSD. Then you can, hopefully, restore the MBR you saved. I can boot to FreeBSD (the new slice is fine) by choosing option 3 but the windows/dos option is fried. My current strategy is to use boot0cfg: # boot0cfg -B But I'm a little squeemish. I don't want to be locked out of FreeBSD (I barely use Windows but I still would like it back for Visio). Any guidance? -- Peter __ Find your next car at http://autos.yahoo.ca ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MBR blown away
Peter wrote: I need help. I added a slice to a single hard drive dual-boot (windows) system and now I guess that scrambled my MBR. I get three options from the FreeBSD (5.4) boot manager: 1. DOS 2. FreeBSD 3. FreeBSD I can boot to FreeBSD (the new slice is fine) by choosing option 3 but the windows/dos option is fried. My current strategy is to use boot0cfg: # boot0cfg -B But I'm a little squeemish. I don't want to be locked out of FreeBSD (I barely use Windows but I still would like it back for Visio). Any guidance? -- Peter This article might provide a clue: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1918391,00.asp -- Ken Stevenson Allen-Myland Inc. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
