# FreeBSD 9 and Windows 7



## mururoa (Dec 31, 2011)

Hello,

I'm trying to have Windows 7 and FreeBSD 9.0 on my computer. I guess you get it, Windows for games and FreeBSD for everything else. I have one SSD and one HD. First I tried to put Windows on first partition and FreeBSD on second of the SSD ... no luck. So I installed FreeBSD on the HD, full zfs with GPT, and then windows on the SSD. But I can't manage to get a working bootloader for both OS  I tried GAG and EasyBCD but then won't boot FreeBSD.

On FreeBSD I don't get the usual F1 Windows F2 FreeBSD but it boots directly FreeBSD. So for now I have to hit F10 @boot so I can choose the disk to boot. Of course it fails 2 times out of 3 and I have to restart and retry. I'm pretty sure I could be able to boot windows using FreeBSD bootloader but how can I configure that?


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## darcsis (Jan 1, 2012)

I also have win7 and FreeBSD installed on my computer. My experience is that, install windows 7 first on a HD, then FreeBSD on the other. FreeBSD will automatically boot both OSes. I am not very sure of the details. However, while installing FreeBSD. You have to install a MBR, which I guess might help FreeBSD to detect other OSes installed on the computer.


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## wblock@ (Jan 1, 2012)

It depends on a bunch of things.  The FreeBSD multi-boot loader only works from an MBR partitioning scheme.  But some Windows 7 disks use the newer GPT partitions.  For that, sysutils/grub2 can multi-boot from GPT partitions.

Multi-booting is not the greatest thing, either.  Another way is to use emulators/virtualbox-ose and install FreeBSD as a virtual machine.  One big advantage is that both machines run at the same time.


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## fnucc (Jan 1, 2012)

I have two HDs and W7 already installed. The second disk is divided in four partitions. I cleared one of them and installed PC-BSD on it. During reboot I press F11 (ASRock motherboard) to get boot options and then I choose OS. Since at some point I must choose OS anyway, I don't care should I press a key sooner or later. Everything works just fine.


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## mururoa (Jan 1, 2012)

@Darcis : I have no MBR in the end. Mainly because full zfs howto was about GPT 
@Wblock : I guess I have to try this. It should be solve the problem.
@fnuck : realy PITA for me. It fails most of the time. That's how I do for now but I have to find something better.
Anyway GPT + zfs is a hard burden for bootloaders. I hope that grub will do the trick.


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## Martillo1 (Jan 1, 2012)

I choose which HDD to boot from the BIOS. Motherboards' software usualy has a handy key to choose the boot media.


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## mururoa (Jan 2, 2012)

Martillo1 said:
			
		

> I choose which HDD to boot from the BIOS. Motherboards' software usualy has a handy key to choose the boot media.


Read my posts. Ofc Of course the MB has a key but it's a real Pain In The Ass since most of the times it fails to catch the key and boot the first drive in the list. So I have an average of 2~3 boots to be able to boot into BSD.
It goes like:
Power On
F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, shit it boots windows 
F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, F10, shit it boots windows again x(
F10, F10,F10, F10,F10, F10,F10, F10,F10, F10,F10, F10,F10, F10,F10, F10,F10, F10, Yeah!


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## fnucc (Jan 2, 2012)

Fortunately, I have no such problems with my ASRock motherboard. I'm using ASRock + Intel since the ancient times and have no problem, so I didn't bother with boot managers. I'm sorry I can't help you more.


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## Dru (Jan 2, 2012)

Replace your keyboard.


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## fnucc (Jan 2, 2012)




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## mururoa (Jan 3, 2012)

Dru said:
			
		

> Replace your keyboard.


I guess you're right there. With a PS/2 keyboard I should have no problem like that. BUT my keyboard is a Razer Blackwidow and no way I would change it


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## bsus (Jan 3, 2012)

You have to press F10 when the lights on your keyboard/mouse starts to shine. Then the keyboard gets power and sends the signals to the motherboard. When you press before getting power the BIOS will ignore incoming signals of the keyboard.

So first F10 when powers on else the board will ignore


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## serverhamster (Jan 5, 2012)

What about 2 operating systems on the same drive?

I installed Windows Vista and FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE on my notebook, in that order.
The boot menu didn't give me a choice, and only contained FreeBSD. After toggling the _bootable_ flag on the Windows partition, Windows boots again, but now I can't boot into FreeBSD.

There's talk about bootinst.exe in this article, but that wasn't written for FreeBSD 9. What's the current method to set up a dual-boot?


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## zeiz (Jan 8, 2012)

I used to try Grub2 from ports (to multiboot Win7 and FreeBSD) but at that time it didn't work for me. Since I have also Ubuntu installation I used its Grub2 and was able to boot everything on my system also having beautiful boot splash.
To boot FreeBSD I have an entry in Ubuntu's (/etc/grub.d/40_custom):


```
menuentry "FreeBSD-9" {
root=(hd0,2,a)
chainloader +1
}
```

It worked perfectly until I reinstalled fresh FreeBSD-9 (marked as 9.0-RELEASE).
Then I got a problem...


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