Dire Need of Help

i hate to be one of those "first post, first question" guys on this forum, but in this case i need some help. a couple months ago i received a macbook pro, and just recently, i discovered the 'boot camp utility.' anywho, today i tried to use the boot camp utility to install windows xp home edition. i went upstairs, dug out the disk, and stuffed it in the macs drive.
so i follow all of the directions, and after the windows install, the computer resets again, except now, all i get is a blank background with a question mark folder blinking.

here's what i've done so far:
1. restarting it - duh
2. disk utility on the mac os x install disk - unable to click verify or repair
3. shaking it (just kidding)
4. reinstalling everything - computer is unable to locate a drive to install the os on - even though in that same...area, it says 132 gb of 152 gb free (or something like that)

so i'm not sure if something went wrong during the partition or what, all i know is that i have a two thousand dollar machine that doesn't work.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

-nick

Can you get into OS X at all? Did you try holding down the Option key when you rebooted the machine? Do you get OS X as a selection when you do? If you can somehow get into OS X, you should be able to run the Boot Camp assistant again and restore the HD back to OS X by wiping out the Windows partition.

According to what you wrote, you have 20 Gb of something on your hard drive. Hopefully it's OS X and not a blank Windows partition.

Did you use a full install SP2 version of Windows XP Home and not an upgrade or a restore version of XP?

If all else fails, you'll need to re-install OS X from your Leopard DVD set.

Regards.

yeah, i tried holding the option key down, and all i got was a white blank screen with the mouse that i can move around fine. so i guess i know something's there, just not enough you know? the cd i used to install windows is called, Reinstallation CD: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition so i suppose it might be a restore disk.
i don't think i have a leopard dvd set. i have two macbook pro installation cd's, but i don't think it's possible for me to restore it, because it's not reading the any of the disk that it would be installed on.
i just tried booting it up normally, and after about a half minute or so, i get a black screen that says: "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key

when that shows up, have you put in the leopard dvd and pressed a key?

yeah, i've tried it multiple times. i put in the disk, restart, and progress untill it tells me to select a destination. then it has a blank white box - which i guess is a blank list of drives or locations to choose from. because nothing is there, i can't continue.
it's like, the computer knows the drive is there, but can't access it.

Hi:

OK. I'm beginning to maybe understand what happened... It appears you used an XP "restore" disk in an attempt to install XP on your MBP. I guess you didn't read the instructions for using Boot Camp. Too late now.

The XP restore disk might have formatted your HD to NTFS overwriting everything else on it. NTFS is read only which makes it difficult to recover from.

The only thing I can advise you to do without spending $$ is to boot the MBP from your Leopard disk, select Disk Utilities from the menu and use the utility to partition and format the HD to HFS+ and then re-install Leopard.

You should be able to partition and format your HD from Disk Utility even though NTFS is read only. I know it works because I've done it before. If you can't "see" the HD from Disk Utilities, then there's not much you can do.

Regards.

erright, i went into disk utility, and clicked on 186.3 GB FUJITSU MHY2200BH Media. i then selected the partition tab where the directions tell me to choose a volume scheme in order to partition the disk, but there is nothing under volume scheme. i'm unable to even click the drop down menu, in which 'current' is selected and grey.
i brought up the information on the drive and i have 127.5 GB of free space (out of 186.3) so the boot camp utility didn't partition all of it.
i can't figure out how it's being read by disk utility as a whole, but none of the individual utilities are reading it, i.e. first aid, erase, or partition. raid and restore seem to work fine. i've decided to leave those tabs alone, seeing as i know nothing about raid's use on my computer, as it's got one drive as isn't used for networking. and i don't know the restore utility is for.
i suppose i'll have to send it in to mac themselves. you think this sort of problem is covered under warranty? i assume it would happen fairly often...

Here's what I did:

Run the Disk Utility, find the drive in the list on the left.

Click on the line that shows capacity.

Click erase at the top of the screen.

Select format MacOS extended for Mac use.

Click erase at the bottom of the screen, then click erase again on the second window.

It should now partition and format the entire drive. After it finishes, reinstall OS X from your Leopard DVD.

If none of the above seems to be working, try repair disk first and then try again.

As for taking your MBP into Apple, they'll gladly do the work for you and charge for it. That problem is not covered under the warranty or Applecare.

Regards.

thanks for the help guys, but i think i'll just have to send it in as i'm unable to click on anything u nder the erase tab.

just one more note though:
when i open disk utility, on the left i see two drives: the fujitsu that i previously mentioned, and another titled, "disk0." when i right click the fujitsu disk, i click on the information tab which tells me that it's unformatted, is locked, is not writable, is not ejectable, an has no mac os 9 drivers installed*. then i can click on disk0's information, that tells me that it has 0 new folders, has no owners enabled, is not bootable, is not and does not support journaled/ing, and that it is partition number 1*. because disk0 says, Partition Number: 1, i think that the disk itself is a partition. when i right click on it, i'm also given the option to 'unmount.' after what's been done, i'm afraid to click anymore unknown options, but i'm wondering if unmounting disk0 from the fujitsu drive would help.
*=among others.
again, thanks for the help.