# Vaio netbook - Dual boot with Windows 7



## frans (Apr 14, 2014)

Good afternoon,

I am hoping to dual-boot Windows / FreeBSD on a Vaio netbook (vpcyb1s1e). Because I don't want to mess around with the existing Windows 7 hdd I am trying to get FreeBSD to run from an _SD card_, for which this machine has an internal slot (no stick sticking out). Burning the USB install image to a USB stick and installing from there onto a 16Gb SD card seemed to work ok, what I am struggling with is getting the system to boot using the SD card. The BIOS will only boot from HDD or USB  and not from the internal SD/MS slots. I found a howto on using the Windows boot manager on http://bastian.rieck.ru/howtos/windows_boot_manager/ with bcdedit, but that one doesn't give the desired result, either 'Boot error' when using boot1 as per howto, or an incomplete looking boot menu when using boot0. The SD card in a reader attached to a USB port will boot until, not unexpectedly, the process tries to mount it's filesytems.

I'd like to be able to boot into FreeBSD, the existing bootmanager would be preferred, as that requires no additional things to be brought along (the SD card can remain in the slot), but if that keeps failing a usb stick with bootmanager (grub?) could be usable, I suppose it can be detached once Freebsd has started.

PC-BSD is perhaps an option, but I expect to run into a similar problem with it.

Thank you for your time.


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## wblock@ (Apr 14, 2014)

EasyBCD (scroll to the bottom, click Register, registration is not required) is a Windows editor that makes modifying the Windows boot config easier.  The FreeBSD disk (SD card) should have either plain MBR bootcode or GPT bootcode rather than the multiboot boot0.

FreeBSD should run from an SD card.  Speed can be an issue, but that's something to determine after getting it to boot.


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## frans (Apr 14, 2014)

Ok, EasyBCD installed. Now?

The SD card, when used in an external card reader will boot the kernel (until it's trying to mount the filesystems), so i assume there is a working MBR on it. But it has to be in the internal SD card reader for use, from where the BIOS will not boot it. How can I get the windows boot manager, through EasyBSD to use it?

Edit, I see, it's own bootmanager should do this. Now I get Operating System not found.


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## wblock@ (Apr 14, 2014)

It depends on the status of the card reader when the Windows boot menu is shown.  If the card reader is not usable then, it won't be possible to boot from it.  Since the card can boot in a different reader, the card itself is set up correctly.


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## frans (Apr 14, 2014)

Mhh, ok, how can I find out if it's usable?

Edit: Could this Neogrub thing be used to load and boot the kernel, which could then mount the file-systems from the SD


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## wblock@ (Apr 14, 2014)

I think you already have.  Maybe there is a way to have the Windows boot prompt show a list of available devices.  Another way to do this would be through the BIOS boot menu.  Some searching shows that a lot of notebooks will not boot from their card readers, but some might.  And it might depend on settings in the BIOS, like a list of which devices are allowed to boot.


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