Bad Partition on WinXP prevents dual boot install

[ProgrammerGuy]

I have recently installed System Commander on a Fujitsu laptop with the hope of using this tool to setup a dual boot (WinXP & PC-BSD).

This didn't work at all. Apparently, the WinXP installed on the laptop has bad values in the partition. (Was this on purpose?)

I don't mean to make this into a System Commander thing. I am just trying to dual boot install with PC-BSD in the easiest way possible.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. (I am also currently trying to work this out with the vendor of System Commander.)

I will update news on this later.

Best regards

[Charles]

I suggest using Grub. Works great :)
http://faqs.pcbsd.org/16_9_en.html

[ProgrammerGuy]

Thanks for the link.

With grub do I still need to be concerned about a 2GB boot limit for partitions? Is there any limit?

[TerryP]

My TacSOP is to boot off a live cd and use qtparted (or gparted) and rearrange the partitions to need, install the OSes then use GAG (http://gag.sourceforge.net/) for a simple graphical boot loader in my MBR.

[Charles]

With grub do I still need to be concerned about a 2GB boot limit for partitions? Is there any limit?

Not that I know...

[ProgrammerGuy]

It's been awhile but here is my follow-up on this.

I got my drive repartitioned (2 primaries).

I interrupt the BIOS with F12 to go to BIOS boot screen.

I select boot from CD. (I have the PC-BSD System Install CD in the drive.)

I get an error 0x01.

As a sanity check I try it again with FreeBSD 6.0 and the FreeBSD installer screen comes up just fine.

I terminate the FreeBSD install because I want ask here what might be going wrong with the PC-BSD boot from BSD before I go any further.

Can anyone offer some help/suggestions for me? (I don't know what's wrong with the PC-BSD disk #1.) IOW, what should I try next?

[jdarnold]

Be sure to burn the PC-BSD ISO at a slow speed, like 8x or 10x or even 4x. Any faster and it never worked for me, not even on the cd it was burned with. Not sure if it has anything to do with the iso itself; all I know is that I don't recall this problem with other ISOs.

[ProgrammerGuy]

Thanks BUT I bought the CDs from here...delivered to me by mail... I didn't burn them myself.

[ProgrammerGuy]

Also, I checked to see if the CDs might have been mis-labeled and tried to boot from each of the other 2 CDs also... no luck. Nothing.

I booted WinXP and looked at the #1 PC-BSD CD with WinXP Explorer and can see all the directories and files... but it will not boot/install.

Suggestions?

[ProgrammerGuy]

I am downloading the ISO images to burn them on CD myself.

This will be my 1st time burning CDs. Does it matter if I use CD-R or CD-RW (or brand) for quality? What do you recommend for quality?

Also, what Windows software would be best to use in burning CDs? Would Nero be good?

[TerryP]

I've used Roxio Easy CD Creator (a 2001'ish version) and Nero Express 6 without problem.

CD-R or CD-RW shouldn't matter but a CD-RW is a little more "insured" aganst being a coaster. I've only used Imation CD-Rs so far but have never had problems when burning at a good speed for my drive (8x) rather then the maximum.

Infact in the case of Nero Express 6 you can go to the disk image/saved project and select the PCBSD ISO file to burn and it should be a fair start.

[ProgrammerGuy]

I've downloaded disk image 1 and 2... I don't see image for disk 3 - applications. Is this available somewhere else? Where do I go to get it (FTP site)?
I guess that this one is from userland and I could get it from FreeBSD, however, I guess that this #3 is PBI based? Or is it not?

[TerryP]

I think they set it up as disk #1 install and disk #2 langpacks+essential pbi for the downloads. There should aso be a metalink thingy and a VMWare image IIRC.