Bootcamp : Win XP missing in startup :confused:

[The Matrix]

Hello. Lately I encountered a very strange at least from an amateurs perspective issue for which I cant find a solution.
A brief introduction before stating the exact issue - I got my 15" MBP 3 months ago and thanks to bootcamp, I was able to install WinXP which would cater to my gaming needs.
This morning I reaslied that the option to boot to WinXP from
"System Preferences\Startup Disk" has suddenly disappeared! I only have 2 icons, namely Network Startup and MAc OS X 10.6.1 :S

I was using WinXP without any issues until yesterday.
What could have gone wrong? Where do I need to look? Is there another way to boot to Win XP?

I would really appreciate your suggestions. Thanks

 

[Colonel_Panic]

The first thing to do is to check whether the Boot Camp partition was vapourized or if it is still around.

First, check the size of your OS X partition. Open Macintosh HD in the Finder and select Get Info from the File menu. That should display the maximum size of the drive, and how much space is left.

Then, open up Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities) and look on the left side for the partitions on your internal drive. You should see the disk drive itself, then 2 sub entries with the name of your partitions.

If you see two partitions, try booting into XP by restarting, and holding option before the startup chime goes. Then you can pick which OS you want to boot into.

 

[The Matrix]

Then, open up Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities) and look on the left side for the partitions on your internal drive. You should see the disk drive itself, then 2 sub entries with the name of your partitions.

I confirm that I can see the 2 entries (MAC HD and BOOTCAMP)

If you see two partitions, try booting into XP by restarting, and holding option before the startup chime goes. Then you can pick which OS you want to boot into.

I dont get this part, How can I reboot from the Utilities window?