Macintosh HD boot drive doesn't show up as Startup Disk (but boots fine)?!?

Hi,
My main internal bootable disk (Macintosh HD) does not show up in Systems Preferences > Startup Disk. If I want to boot from it, I have to either hold down the "Option" key at startup (and the disk appears fine, so I select it), or I have to wait for the machine to explore all other boot options before it finally resorts to booting from the internal Macintosh HD.
I cannot simply select "Macintosh HD" from the Startup Disk preference pane.
I have already tried repairing permissions, and I did a "Verify" in Disk Utility - everything checks out fine.
I even replaced the StartupDisk.prefpane file from another disk, but no improvement.
How can I get my hard drive to show up in the "Startup Disk" preferences?
(I should mention that this is a new hard drive that I just installed by cloning it from another bootable drive). The other bootable drive shows up fine in the Startup Disk prefs.
Help would be greatly appreciated!

The Partition Map Scheme is currently set to "Master Boot Record."
What does this mean?
That's normally used for Windows.
Do I need to change it to GUID?
Yes.
How do I do that?
You have to re-partition the drive, which means it will erase everything on the drive.
Boot from the Leopard install DVD (hold "C" while booting), choose you language, then select Disk Utility from the "Utilities" menu. Select the drive (at the left, not the volume indented below it), and click the "Partition" tab. Set "Volume Scheme" to "1 Partition", then click the "Options" button. Select "GUID Partition Table", then click "OK". Enter a volume name, set "Format" to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled" and click "Apply".

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