FreeBSD 4.7 + WinXP + GRUB problem

[Aron Silverton]

I attempted to set up a notebook with a single drive to dual-boot and now I am having a problem booting into XP. Here's the story:

I split a notebook's hard drive in half (10GB each half) and installed XP (NTFS) on the first parition. I installed FreeBSD 4.7-Release on the second half. I was originally unable to boot FreeBSD, but this was because I did not select a boot manager during the install phase. I went back into /stand/sysintall and installed the FreeBSD boot loader. Upon a reboot, I was presented with the

F1 ??
F2 FreeBSD

menu and was able to boot either OS without any problems. Yeah. I thought that it would be fun to try GRUB, so I did the following:

1. Built the GRUB port
2. Made the directory /boot/grub and moved the stage1, stage2, and *stage1_5 files there from /usr/local/share/grub/i386-freebsd
3. I created a menu.lst file under /boot/grub with the following in it:
(only relevant sections shown)

title FreeBSD
root (hd0,1,a)
kernel /boot/loader
title WinXP
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

4. I created a GRUB boot floppy per the instructions in the manual, rebooted, and performed the following steps:

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
(hd0,1,a)
grub> root (hd0,1,a)
Filesystem type is ffs, partition type 0xa5
grub> setup (hd0,0)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/ffs_stage1_5" exists... yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/ffs_stage1_5 (hd0,0)... failed (this is not fatal)
Running "embed /boot/grub/ffs_stage1_5 (hd0,1,a)... failed (this is not fatal)
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0,0) /boot/grub/stage2 p /boot/grub/menu.lst "... Succeeded
Done.
grub> reboot

I wasn't sure what to think of the warnings, so I proceeded. After the reboot, I got the same F1, F2 menu that I started with.

5. I used my XP CD to repair the MBR thinking that it was the problem. I ran fixmbr and rebooted.

Upon the reboot, I got the GRUB menu. Selecting the FreeBSD option worked fine, but selecting WinXP returned me to the menu. I was able to see a very quick error message saying, "Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7" before the menu was redrawn.

6. I rebooted using the GRUB boot floppy, and repeated step 4. This time, I substituted setup(hd0) for (hd0,0). Does that make a difference?

I got the same behavior as before - FreeBSD boots, XP does not. I tried writing a new MBR once again, issuing commands from the GRUB prompt, changing root to rootnoverify in the WinXP commands. No good.

Any suggestions as to where I went wrong and how I can get my WinXP install back or is it too late for me? If it is too late, should I be able to reinstall XP on the first partition and maintain my FreeBSD install on the second?

Thanks,

Aron


--
Aron J. Silverton
Senior Staff Research Engineer
Motorola Laboratories, Networks and Infrastructure Research
Motorola, Inc.


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