Winxp is gone when pressing option key at startup, "no bootable device"

Question

Hi everyone,
I'm new to mac and recently bought a MBP.
I did bootcamp and installed windows xp and SP3 at the same time in a small partition, I remember it was 8gb.
I had no problem booting in to xp or mac after the installation, I can even press option and see both OS.
But now I cannot boot to windows, at startup while pressing the option key, I only see mac os and not windows. I also tried rebooting from the startup disk utility, but it has a black screen saying "no bootable disk found." It wants me to insert a bootable disk, so I inserted the window xp disk and has to force restart the laptop. Then it started a process like trying to load the files to reinstall win xp, of course I didn't let it.
Now when I went back to disk utilities I see that the winxp partition is 9.2gb, it was 8gb when I made it.
Recently I split my mac partition into 2, I tried to do the time machine back up, but then it takes too long so I canceled it and deleted the partition. I wonder if this affects my window xp partition.
Now I cannot see winxp when pressing option key at startup, but can see it in startup disk utility, and disk utility. When I boot from startup disk utility, it shows "no bootable device, insert cd, and press anykey..." I tried verifying and repairing the parition in disk utility, didn't work.
So this is all I did before I cannot boot into xp.
1. made new partition for winxp (formated partition as FAT)in bootcamp and installed winxp + sp3. everything was fine.
2. create another partition, and call it "data" <-want to create this for data only, while the other half is for software installation only.
3. create another partition for time machine, but when running time machine it says the partition is too small, so I delete it and make the partition bigger.then I run time machine, but since it takes way too long, I canceled it, and deleted the partition.
4. in winxp, had installed kapersky anti-virus 9.0
Now, I have 3 partitions: 1 for software installation, 1 for data, and 1 for winxp.
So why can't I boot to windows? Did things overwrite? Please help me, I'm so frustrated. Thank you.
Message was edited by: nobutan
Message was edited by: nobutan

Answer 1

Thanks fortuny,
I had read the link you suggested. And since my partition for windows is FAT32, as noted in the website, I can edit the boot.ini directly in my mac. In my mac, it already shows that the partition # is 3,
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN/fastdect
but my window os is not booting.
Like the link noted, "it crashes with the "I'm sorry, we couldn't start up Windows. Do you want to start in Safe Mode?" screen. You'll also see a flicker of the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH, which flashes an UNMOUNTABLEBOOTVOLUME error so quickly you won't have a chance to read it. This was the hint that the BOOT.INI entries were incorrect..."
According to the boot.ini in the site, my boot.ini file was already set up correctly, so why can't windows startup?
Also something I don't understand from this:
"NOTES: If you didn't follow the instructions and chose to PARTITION the existing volume instead of RESIZING then ADDING a partition, this appears to mess up BootCamp's boot loader and you may have to start again. Step 3, however, may offer you a way out."
When I did the 3rd partition, I did it in Disk Utility in mac, not from the mac os cd, and I split the mac partition into 2, I didn't do the "resizing," then using the unused space to make new partition... I wonder if this is causing the normal booting...
So do I start again by deleting my data partition or start from reinstalling windows? If the problem can be fixed without installing windows, of course, it would be great.
Message was edited by: nobutan