Jerry: Thanks for your long response. I have downloaded bootitng v1.32 from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ and it works great. It has nice menu. The only thing to watch is that I should create a dedicated partition for bootitng before trying to install it. I also changed the timeout from 0 to 5. The machine originally has:
MBR entry 0 31MB Dell Utility MBR entry 1 all the rest of the disk space HPFS/NTFS Now it has: MBR entry 0 31MB Dell Utility MBR entry 1 7499MB HPFS/NTFS boot 126MB FAT-32 <-- BootItNG FreeBSD 68661MB xBSD Who said four primary partitions is enough? -Zhihui On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, Jerry McAllister wrote: > > > > > > I have a machine preinstalled with Windows XP and I do not want to remove > > it or reinstall it. Is there a way to install FreeBSD on the free space? I > > do not have Partition Magic. Any free software out there that can > > repartition without reinstallation? Thanks. > > There is a freeware utility that can do this with Microsloth file systems > up through fat-32 but since it is XP and, probably, an NTFS partition, > invest in a partition managing utility. > > I have used Partition Magic successfully and have seen BootItNG recommended. > I haven't used BootItNG. Partition Magic is generally available in stores > like Best Buy, etc. I would guess that BootItNG is also, but it can be > had from: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com as well. > > Generally you want to squeeze the XP partition down to the front of > the disk enough to give you what space you want for FreeBSD and have > it make you an empty parition (called slice in FreeBSD PARLANCE) out > of the rest of the space above it. > > Then you install FreeBSD in that empty slice. > You will divide that FreeBSD slice up in to the FreeBSD partitions > you will use for mountable filesystems and swap space. Note the > difference in use of the term 'partition' between BreeBSD and MS. > > Choose to install the full boot manager when you do the FreeBSD > install or get one of the other popular ones and install it. > The FreeBSD boot manager will allow you to boot either OS just fine, > but it does not know what to call XP on an NTFS system so it just > labels it ?? in the selection menu. Some of the others are > prettier and let you play with stuff a little more. > > Things to watch: > Some older BIOSes will not boot stuff if the address is too high - > around 8GB in most disks. It has to do with a cylinder counter > not being large enough to count beyond 1024. Partition Magic > warns you of where that point is on the disk when you partition it. > > Microsloth seems to like to have an extra partition or some kind of > space at a high address on the disk that I don't know much about - > seems to be some sort of scratch space. Make sure you don't wipe > that out on a fully running system if it is there. > > Some vendors, such as Dell make their own sort of hidden space on > the disk for their own maintenance utilities. I think that must be > treated as a partition (slice) and protected from tinkering. Someone > else can probably answer better on this. > > If you use Partition Magic and the MS stuff is an NTFS partition, you > must first install Partition Magic, then make the two "rescue disk" > floppies it tells you about (format two floppies ahead of time) and > finally boot to the floppies and do the partition resizing from there. > It doesn't seem to like to do it from the installed version on a running > system - probably due to the scratch space thing I mention above, but it > won't boot the rescue disk without the thing being installed, I guess as > some sort of copy protection. > > I am guessing that BootItNG has to take care of similar housekeeping > issues as the NTFS scratch space as well, but don't know how it goes > about handling them. > > Now, of course, you can just have a complete separate disk for the > FreeBSD installation if you like and you have the disk available. > Then, forget all the Partition Magic or BootItNG stuff. Just > make the second disk one big FreeBSD slice, divide it up in to > appropriate FreeBSD partitions and then install FreeBSD in that. > Still install the boot manager (which will still go in to the > sector 0 MBR area of the first disk) so you can choose to boot > either OS. > > ////jerry > > > > > -Zhihui > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
