question about flagging partitions

[gui3]

i'm new to the osx86 thing, and i'm trying to learn.

 

i'm installing on a thinkpad x61 tablet with vista pre-installed:

partition 1 - recovery partition.

partition 2 - vista

partition 3 - osx

 

the guide i'm using has me booting back into linux after the osx install and flagging the vista partition.

 

am i right that this is happening because OSX is flagging its own partition as the active partition when it installs, and so i have to change it back to the vista partition in order for it to boot (before i get the bootloader installed)?

 

if that's right, then please help me explain why this happened:

 

i got OSX installed and dual-booting was working fine, with the recovery partition intact. OSX crapped out on me when i tried to do an update, so i just popped the DVD in and reinstalled. the next thing that happened was a winload.exe error and me being unable to boot to windows. could this have been fixed by changing the flagging in some way?