Booting FreeBSD From Windows Boot Loader

Hi, on this howto i will write how to boot FreeBSD using Windows 7/8 boot loader.

First you save the MBR in case something goes wrong so you could restore it and at least boot the FreeBSD.

# dd if=/dev/ada0 of=/mnt/usb_disk/mbr.backup bs=512 count=1

Then you need first sector of your FreeBSD root partition. You will put this on Windows C partition so Windows boot loader can pass instructions to it.

# dd if=/dev/ada0s2a of=/mnt/usb_disk/bootsect.bsd bs=512 count=1

Depends on your system, the root partition can be on different partition, you can see it by typing and looking at root partition /

# df

Now boot your windows 7/8 install dvd and select recovery mode/repair mode then launch "command prompt" and write:

# BOOTREC /FIXMBR

Now reboot to windows, copy "bootsect.bsd" to "C:\" drive, and again open "command prompt". Write these lines ({ID_NUMBER} is will be different on your system, as it's automatically generated by random chars):

Thats all and the result will be:

Have a nice day!