[ozmac]

Hi guys, new to this forum and looking for some help.

I've recently lost all my osx os, videos, photos, music due to an attempt at installing windows xp using boot camp. I've freshly installed OSX Leopard 10.5.8 and made 2 partitions using boot camp for windows (5gb each , that's all windows deserves). When the windows setup starts it loads for 20mins then goes to the partition section and only lets me see 130gb of space, even though I have 320gb, most of it is osx, and the other 2 x 5gbs for windows - just doesn't add up, weird!

Anyway, my only option is to format that 130gb of space, and if I do that there goes my osx again, can't add partition, wont see the other partitions made by boot camp. Can anybody assist?

[ghporter]

ozmac, welcome to our forums!

It sounds like you're not using a version of XP that's at least up to SP2. If it's prior to Service Pack 2, install can be challenging and it will ultimately fail. One difference is in how the installer sees and reads partitions.

But you need WAY more than 5 GB for XP. The OS should get about 4GB if you install everything, then you'll need space for your apps and data. I suggest at least 10-12GB as a starting point, and maybe it's this small space issue that's ruining your installs.

Before you format the 130GB of space, I suggest you reboot back into OS X and use the Boot Camp Utility to restore your drive to a single OS X partition. Once that's done I recommend restarting, then again using the BC Utility to produce a Windows partition of at least 10GB. When you start to install Windows, see if the new, larger partition is visible - it should be labeled "C:" by the utility so it should be easy to find.

[cgc]

Did you format the 5GB BootCamp partition using the Windows XP installer? BootCamp doesn't leave the partition in a state Windows XP can correctly install onto, though it looks like it'll work, it doesn't until you have the WIndows XP installer format it. Just make sure it's the 5GB partition