Re: Adding a XP disk to FreeBSD machine

Nikola Lecic wrote:
On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 16:11:28 -0400
Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sun, Jun 17, 2007 at 10:01:16PM +0200, Nikola Lecic wrote:

On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 09:23:00 -0700
Garrett Cooper <youshi10@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rico Secada wrote:
[...]
I have another HD which used to be in the same box running XP.
I set this drive to slave and installed it into the box in
order to dualboot. [...]
1. All windows disks must be primary if you're going to boot off
of them -- sorry, it's a stupid requirement that M$ setup a long
time
What do you mean? I think he asked about slave (primary I suppose).
I ask this because ...

Now that I think about it I don't think that there's anything wrong as long as the boot order doesn't change. This is simple to modify with SATA/SCSI, but PATA is statically set based on the jumper pins.

Once you change the boot order, things change in the OS in terms of how the registry mapped entries, programs found their way around, etc, and it breaks everything.

3. You'll have to setup the boot manager on the windows disk.
... "windows" can normally boot from slave position without
bootloader, (in some cases with help of 'boot.ini' and
ntldr/ntdetect.com, but AFAIK only if booting is impossible even
when ad1 (D) is selected in BIOS as the first boot choice).
Yes. Drive lettering gets tricky though, based on what partitions were active when stuff was installed, etc, because Nikola's first NTFS/FAT formatted partition could have been C:, not D:, etc. *sighs and shakes head at bad partitioner in 2k/xp/2k3 installer*.
HE is trying to dual boot the machine. He needs something on that
second disk that the MBR on the first disk can transfer control to.
That something is the MBR on the second disk. That's the way it
works.

Yes :)

I said that it's _possible_ to keep the second disk stay untouched (as
it remained after xp installation). I replied because (1)+(3) of
Garrett's e-mail implied (maybe, that's why I asked him a question)
that xp cannot start from the second disk without _separate_ bootloader
installed _there_ from the outside, which is not true.

My statement doesn't say anything about contents of the first disk and
doesn't negate any of the options you proposed.

I did add two things:

(a) a proposition to check ad1 separately -- doesn't hurt;

(b) a possible help if xp cannot orientate itself.

Nikola Lečić
The reasoning used in this document is the basis for my previous statement:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/112019

So as long as the boot ordering or disk ordering of the primary (Windows) disk doesn't change, things should be groovy.

-Garrett
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