cannot boot to windows

Hi everyone,
I'm new to mac and recently bought a MBP.
I did bootcamp and installed windows xp and SP3 at the same time in a small partition, I remember it was 8gb.
I had no problem booting in to xp or mac after the installation, I can even press option and see both OS.

But now I cannot boot to windows, at startup while pressing the option key, I only see mac os and not windows. I also tried rebooting from the startup disk utility, but it has a black screen saying "no bootable disk found." It wants me to insert a bootable disk, so I inserted the window xp disk and has to force restart the laptop. Then it started a process like trying to load the files to reinstall win xp, of course I didn't let it.

Now when I went back to disk utilities I see that the winxp partition is 9.2gb, it was 8gb when I made it.
Recently I split my mac partition into 2, I tried to do the time machine back up, but then it takes too long so I canceled it and deleted the partition. I wonder if this affects my window xp partition.

So this is all I did before I cannot boot into xp.
1. made new partition for winxp in bootcamp and installed winxp. everything was fine.
2. create another partition, and call it "data" <-want to create this for data only, while the other half is for software installation only.
3. create another partition for time machine, but when running time machine it says the partition is too small, so I delete it and make the partition bigger.then I run time machine, but since it takes way too long, I canceled it, and deleted the partition.
Overall, I have 3 partitions: 1 for software installation, 1 for data, and 1 for winxp.

So why can't I boot to windows? Did things overwrite? Please help me, I'm so frustrated. Thank you.

First, why would you want to run Time Machine from the same disk that requires backing up? What happens to your Time Machine backup if your internal hard drive fails? Do you understand that if the drive fails you will have lost everything including the Time Machine backup?

Second: Stop thinking Windows. You do not need to divide your hard drive into partitions as you would for a Windows machine. All that does is cause confusion for program installation and can lead to data loss.

Here's what I suggest: Since you probably destroyed your Windows boot sector with the partitioning, it's best to start over and re-do everything. Use Disk Utility after booting the machine from your Snow Leopard DVD, erase all the extra partitions you made including the Boot Camp one. Drag the partition line to make one partition on your hard drive.

Reboot back to OS X Snow Leopard. Try to create another Boot Camp partition and reinstall Windows. Let us know if you're still having difficulty.

Regards.

before I must erase all my partitions and reinstall windows, so after installing windows with bootcamp, what is the proper way (without affecting my windows partition) to create one more partition to store my mac data?

I thought I made it clear in my first post that creating an extra partition for data is not a good idea in OS X? If you insist on creating another partition, use Disk Utility after booting from your Snow Leopard DVD.

Regards.

What you recommend me doing now is just repeating your first post. Since I've already made it clear that I'm such a newbie in mac, and now I mention that I'm also a newbie in technical solving, I would be grateful if you can tell me step by step about how to successfully create another partition after installing windows in bootcamp.

From my understanding, you're telling me to create a 3rd partition in the disk utility after booting from the snow leopard dvd? It is different from the disk utility in normal booting? I already mentioned that my 3rd partition was created in disk utility in mac, and you said it destroyed the windows os. From what I'm getting, you recommend me to do the same thing as what I have done before.
Or I misunderstood you?

In order to create extra partitions on your MacIntosh HD you must boot your machine from your Snow Leopard DVD. Then, instead of going into the install sequence, you would select "Utilities", "Disk Utility" from the top menu.

After doing that, highlight your hard drive on the left (top name entry) and then select the partition tab on the right. Now you can create or remove partitions.

Note that if you create extra partitions on your MacIntosh HD you will not be able to use Boot Camp. And if you use Boot Camp first to create a partition for Windows XP, there is a danger of destroying your Windows boot sector if you subsequently create more partitions. (I believe that's what may have happened the first time.)

That's why I recommended that you just create the one partition using Boot Camp for Windows XP. Since you're new with Macs it's best you keep things as simple as possible.

If you need more help with this, post back.

Regards.

I have created a similar post in apple discussions, and my problem is solved now. Here is my post.