Boot Camp "disk error" and no chance to format the partition

[kAdam]

I have just partitioned my hard drive with Boot Camp and just after it restarts my computer to install Windows it stays on an initial black screen with a short message saying "disk error press any key to restart". Pressing any, however, does not do anything.

I have held down the power key to shut it off and then held down the option key to reboot from my OSX partition and it starts fine that way. I recently tried to have bootcamp install Windows on an external drive and that nearly worked (I followed a tutorial on how to adjust some boot settings in the installation disk, but came across some code error). I then opted to just partition onto the same internal drive with the unaltered copy. This still did not work. I came to the point of Windows booting and installing from the CD to reformat the partition (as stated in the bootcamp guide. I am somewhere between pages 10 and 11), but it never even gets to the point of formatting the FAT32 partition to NTFS like I want.

When I tried installing to the external drive, it didn't work at first because it was still FAT32. After I attached it to a Windows computer and formatted it to NTFS, it went much farther along until the code error.

So, I am wondering if I formatted the partition to NTFS before installation it would install?? But, how do I do this? Disk Utility does not have the NTFS option. Is there another application? Do I just have a bad copy of Windows?

Any ideas? Thanks for any help. Or for pointing me to a thread where this is remedied.

 

[freereg]

I also have the same problem with 10.5.6 on a C2D Macbook Pro.

The FAT32 partition Boot Camp Assistant creates is useless- either corrupted or just inaccessible, it fools the Windows XP install disc but after DOS-mode file-copying it can't boot into the graphical install, and returns 'disk error'. If you try to format it in NTFS during the install process then Windows returns an error in the HAL, saying it is unable to boot. [<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll]

Boot Camp is a broken piece of s**t and of course there's no way to manually create a FAT32 partition in OSX aside from Boot Camp.

Is there any utility to create a proper FAT32 partition outside of Boot Camp and properly configure the GPT faux partition table so Windows install will recognize this partition? The errors generated by the Windows installer both on FAT32 and NTFS seem to me to be problems starting the partition. This NTFS-related error is often because boot.ini is missing. Isn't this exactly what Boot Camp is supposed to address?

 

[sheraz4u]

After creating a Windows partition in Boot Camp 2.0 in Mac OS X 10.5, then rebooting from the Windows XP installer CD, be sure that you format the Windows partition before continuing with the rest of the Windows XP setup process.

Important: Do not use the options named "Leave the current file system intact (no changes)" or "Convert the partition to NTFS."

 

[freereg]

There is no option to reformat the partition if it is already FAT32.

The options are:

Setup Windows XP on the existing partition (FAT32 - no option to reformat)
Create partition in unpartitioned space (tiny Mb gaps between partitions)
Delete the selected partition (this will allow reformat ONLY TO NTFS)