On 2004-09-23 smb@research.att.com wrote:

> I'm trying to build a dual-boot machine, Windows 98 and NetBSD.  I
> installed NetBSD first (it was a blank disk), leaving fdisk room for
> Windows.  But the Windows installer is complaining about not being able
> to read the last cluster on the MS-DOS partition.  (I copied /dev/zero
> to it and then formatted it with newfs_msdos -F 32.)  Does the
> partition need to have some special properties, such as cylinder
> alignment or an integer multiple of some number of sectors?  And if
> so, why didn't newfs_msdos at least print a warning?

  I don't know about your problem specifically, however when I tried
installing Windows ME to a newfs_msdos formatted disk a year or so ago it
installed without error but would not boot.  Fixing the MBR didn't help
any and I am fairly sure I tried running sys.com from a dos disk on it as
well.  At that point I was just happy that it had not written to my NetBSD
partition and made a mental note not to try that again.  It should always
be possible to format from windows install tools, so I would highly
recommend doing that.  I have never been able to get fsck_msdos to work
reasonably either (which would be kinda helpful due to the complete
inability of windows to sanely fsck disks), but I don't care enough to put
any effort into trying to fix it.

Matthew Orgass
darkstar@city-net.com