Windows Setup Error, Need Help

[portal87]

so i just tried to install what i think was XP home edition on my MacBook. I picked the partitioned boot camp disk to install it to, and all went well until the setup was complete. After setup was finished copying files, my computer rebooted and came to a black screen that read something like "press any key to boot from disk. . . . ." then it displayed a message something like "disk error, press any key to restart." so i pressed a number of keys but nothing happened. i couldn't eject the disk or get anything to happen so i had to do a cold shut down. I rebooted and when it came to the black screen again i pressed a key before the error popped up and it took my directly back to the windows setup.

so basically im stuck going through the setup. although now i cant get past the part that asks you which disk to copy windows to, because its already been setup on the boot camp disk. i cant eject the windows CD or figure out how to get back to the mac OS.

Im pretty bad at computers so any help would be great, its either this or i take it to an apple store. Does anyone know what might be causing this problem?

Thanks.

 

[Trainwreck707]

Try restarting while holding the option key. Hopefully you'll see your Mac and Windows partitions.

 

[portal87]

Awesome, that worked. thanks a ton.

 

[CWallace]

Did you reformat the Boot Camp partition within the Windows installer? Boot Camp's FAT32 format when it creates the partition will not work to boot windows. You'll likely need to format within the Windows installer if you want to use NTFS, as well.

Caught me out at first, as well. The Boot Camp installation guide (that you are recommended to at least read prior to rebooting into Boot Camp for the first time) notes you have to do this.