boot camp, missing windows on option boot up screen

[jeremytehjerk]

i installed windows xp on my macbook the other day and everything went smoothly, have a partition for windows (FAT file system) and after install it loaded up fine, and rebooted back into os X no problem. however when I try to do the holding the option key to select what drive to startup with the only option is "Macintosh HD"

I can still get the comp to load into windows xp but only by first loading mac os x and opening the options for startup disk and choosing to reboot into windows xp.

any ideas on what is up? why cant i see my windows HD as a disk to boot from when i hold down the option key on startup?

 

[hankolerd]

did you do it through boot camp? That is the only thing i can think of...did you install all the apple drivers? There might be something in the drivers that makes it accesible through the disk-boot screen.

 

[xUKHCx]

Is this a new Santa Rosa Macbook, because people are reporting problems when using FAT32 for bootcamp and apparently they go away by using NTFS.

To convert you can use the convert function built into windows. Of course there are drawbacks which means you can't natively write to each partition from either OS but this can be overcome with third party programs such as hfsexplorer or macdrive and macfuse.

 

[hankolerd]

You might want to switch to NTFS anyway, having the FAT32 is nice because you can talk between partitions, but it is bad if windows gets a virus, as it would have full access to all your OSX files. I am sure you know of this already, but if not, you do now.

 

[jeremytehjerk]

ya i went with FAT because im not really using windows, i just work in campus tech support and thus saw advantage in being able to boot into windows if i need to check something such as wifi setup in an area for windows, etc. but did not give it very much room on my hard drive and dont really want it to be inaccessible (or even have to use a third party application to get at any files from mac os x).

but even though it is working fine to switch to through preferences in mac os x it could be not appearing on the screen at startup because of an error with this system (FAT)? (oh and by the way i can change my comp to start up in windows as well only thing i cant get it to do is give me a choice on the disk start up menu you can access by holding option on startup)

and yes I got all drivers working fine for within windows xp, i tested around with it all pretty extensively yesterday and windows not appearing on the disk select screen when booting up holding option was the only problem i ran into (well problem that i didnt already know about going into this)

 

[jeremytehjerk]

i went ahead and switched it to ntfs using microsofts convert tool and it is coming up as a choice when i hold option on start up now. thanks!

but weird that everything else about it would work but listing it as a choice there with FAT32. lol

 

[xUKHCx]

Is this with a SR macbook? Because as stated previously it seems there is a bug with these and FAT32.