Recovering FreeBSD bootloader

[bandwidth_pig]

I recently had to reinstall Windows on a dual boot machine I used for FreeBSD as well. How do you recover the bootloader for FreeBSD? Windows toasted my MBR, and I could not get the bootloader to reinstall using:

/stand/sysinstall

without toasting my existing partitions. I'm sure I'll run into this again. Anybody have any good pointers?

[dkeav]

make a lilo or grub floppy to boot the install and fix it from there

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

With /stand/sysinstall, try this. You don't have to wipe out your partitions-- when you get to the part where it asks you to repartition your system, simply select the option to use the FreeBSD bootloader, and then when you actually use the fdisk editor, just hit W . It will rewrite the current partition info, and not hurt anything. But, it should also rewrite the MBR in the process.

[bandwidth_pig]

Thanks for the pointers. I thought about lilo, but really wanted to stick to the traditional FreeBSD route.

I tried what you had suggested prior to my post Alex. It would not take for some reason. I would get the option to install the bootloader, select it and it never did install. After trying numerous times, I decided to go ahead and reinstall, but I have been plagued with problems ever since. I have tried both 4.8 and 4.9 and I always have packages that just won't install. I have tried both from CD and FTP. It's different packages everytime, but a problem none the less. I thought perhaps I downloaded a bad ISO, so I am trying again. :confused:

[bandwidth_pig]

Yep. It was a bad ISO. Wonder why that happens so frequently? I was downloading both discs at the same time. I decided to just download them one at a time and I had no problems with 4.9 this time :D

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Interestingly enough, I actually just had to come up with a solution to this one.

Use a Linux boot CD that has fdisk or cfdisk. Simply mark the FreeBSD partition as the active (in fdisk) or the bootable (in cfdisk). write the partition table, and reboot. The FreeBSD partition will boot automatically. :cool: