Good to see ya back from holiday...

"and yes you can reformat each windows partition to ntfs in windows" meant you can reformat during the XP installation.

as for the booting problem, leave the installation DVD in, but don't allow the installation to start. it sounds like a bootloader installation issue and if you boot up using the DVD, you can install chameleon yourself once booted. This should fix your OS X booting. As for your windows installs not working. first create the partitions by using the XP or Vista installer.

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