Leopard thinks my NTFS partition is FAT32

After running the Bootcamp Assistant, there was a 32GB partition called "BOOTCAMP" mounted, it was FAT32. I installed Windows, and during installation I formatted the partition to NTFS. I've done this several times before and normally Leopard would recognize the partition as NTFS.

But, this time it still thinks that it's a FAT32 partition, and it still reads BOOTCAMP. I've since changed the name of the drive, and it doesn't affect my Windows installation at all. But Disk Utility sees it as a 32GB Fat32 partition that has no files. Leopard recognizes other NTFS partitions like thumb drives and such, and I've installed Paragon NTFS and NTFS-3G (not at the same time) but neither solved the problem. I ran ntfsfix, and it told me to run chkdsk, but there is no such command.

Doing the same thing and expecting different results is called insanity, but what is it when I actually get different results?

Wow, no one has any idea huh?

Looks like I gotta pay for this problem, I'll head on over to experts exchange...

Well, there is a chkdsk command. You just have to know how to implement it from Windows. You implement the command from a command prompt within Windows. Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) and type in chkdsk /f

It will come back and tell you that it will run chkdsk on the next bootup of Windows. (the drive must be dismounted first)

As for the mixup between FAT-32 and NTFS, it may be a glitch in the partition descriptor (partition table) where it may actually be identified as FAT-32 whereas it's really NTFS. Software such as Partition Magic can easily fix that if you have a copy handy. You would have to boot the machine from the PM CD and navigate to the correct partition and fix it.

Regards.

Thanks for replying. I had already ran chkdsk, which came up empty. I think I have an old version of PM from XP days, I'll see what that turns out.

If you can't find your PM disk, you can possibly download a free copy of GParted (Linux) partition software, and try to fix it that way. Here's the link to download the live CD: Link

Regards.

I used GParted to "fix" the disk, which turned it into a real, unbootable FAT32 with no files.

I reinstalled, but this time I simply formatted the FAT32 partition to NTFS, instead of deleting the partition first. I deleted it before to utilize the 128 MB "free space" that preceded the partition, I now believe that that wasn't free space after all, but simply a teeny special partition that Windows could not read...

Bootcamp isn't lying about the filesystem - the partition it creates is FAT32 and you have to re-format the partition to NTFS from the Windows install disc. I think it's an anti-piracy measure because retail copies of XP will offer to format or convert the partition before installing, whereas OEM and pirated copies sometimes don't ask and will just install it on a FAT32 partition. With a regular PC this works just fine but for some reason these Intel Macs won't boot Windows from a FAT32 partition.

Also, don't use GParted. I was just trying to install XP on my friend's MacBook a few days ago, and as a good GNU/Linux user, this was my first thought, but after re-formatting the partition to NTFS with GParted, the Windows installer wouldn't find it! It just saw the entire hard drive as one big "unformatted" partition.

EDIT: I read your post wrong the first time. Maybe you installed it on the wrong partition?