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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ns.mcs.kent.edu!kira.cc.uakron.edu!malgudi.oar.net!infinet!mfoley From: mfoley@infinet.com (Mark Foley) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Subject: Re: [FreeBSD] Problem booting from HD Date: 11 Jun 1994 06:09:57 GMT Organization: InfiNet - Internet Access (614/224-3410) Lines: 25 Message-ID: <2tbkfl$q4t@rigel.infinet.com> References: <griffith.771232492@marsh> NNTP-Posting-Host: rigel.infinet.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Don Griffiths (griffith@cs.curtin.edu.au) wrote: : G'Day, : I've just installed FreeBSD 1.1 GENERICAH#0 on a 386DX33 pc with : a Plus Impluse 120AT IDE hard drive. It boots fine from floppy : but I cannot get it to boot from the HD after copying the kernel : to it. I can direct the floppy to load the kernel from the HD : but each time I try to boot it from the HD direct, I get the : message "Missing Operating System". The PC has previously had : MS-DOS 6.2 on the HD. Any Ideas? : Don Griffiths. Here's an idea that worked for me once. I had a similar problem with 'ole 386BSD way back when. The hard drive I used was previously completely used by DOS 6.x. The *BSD installation program was somehow confused into either thinking the partition table was already OK and didn't modify it properly, or thought the disk was already bootable (or some other hi-tech reason upon which I'm not qualified to speculate). Anyway, I finally solved the problem by using the bios disk utilities to trash the disk - I think I used the 'verify surface' option (you're not supposed to low-level format IDE drives). After cuisinarting the outer cylinders, the *BSD installation did all the right things and created a bootable drive. If the other suggestions didn't work, give this a shot. Post or email me your results - I'm curious.