Re: After Install -- Where is FreeBSD?

On Monday 20 June 2005 01:16 pm, Benjamin Sher wrote:
> All that's missing now is FreeBSD. After completing my install, I exited.
> FreeBSD exited normally, then rebooted. But no sign of FreeBSD. Instead,
> Windows came up. I do recall choosing to have a boot manager but never
> actually saw the screen and boot-up options. So, I went back into Free BSD
> by switching back to the CD in my Bios, but that's as far as I dare go on
> my own. What should I do? Am I missing something?

> Just for the record, I have two primary HD. Windows is installed on the
> first (ad0) and FreeBSD on the second (ad1).

In some BIOS, you can switch the boot order of the hard drives.  So lets say 
that ide0 is windows and freebsd is ide1.  You may be able to tell your 
system to try to boot from ide1 first.  

I'm not intimately familiar with the details of the disk setup that takes 
place when you install FreeBSD, but I think what probably happened is that 
ide1, your FreeBSD drive, has the OS and an MBR on it, but your BIOS never 
trys to boot from it.


> Windows XP came through completely unscathed and in perfect working order on 
my first primary HD.

This is why your Windows XP installation was unscathed -- the FreeBSD install 
did nothing to that disk.

If you can not get your BIOS to boot from ide1, what I would do is switch the 
drive order by physically switching the cabling if necessary.  Once your 
computer is booting from the FreeBSD disk, you can modify the boot loader 
menu to allow you the option to boot from Windows XP.  (The bootloader can be 
a bit more sophisticated than the BIOS about managing the boot process.)

Hope that helps,

Mike