problem mounting NTFS partition

[Gerhard Magnus]

I've been trying to mount an NTFS partition on a system dual booting XP
and FC6, following the instructions in the "Personal Fedora Core 6
Installation
Guide" (http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc6.html#ntfs).
These are basically:

(1) yum install fuse fuse-libs ntfs-3g ntfsprogs ntfsprogs-gnomevfs
(2) create directory /mnt/winNTFS
(3) add this line to /etc/fstab:
/dev/sda1  /mnt/winNTFS  ntfs-3g  ro,defaults,umask=0222  0 0

But then I get this error message during booting:
Fuse mount point creation error.  No such file or directory
Unmounting /dev/sda1  Failed

When I log on I find the partition has not mounted.

While logged on, if I do this command (also in the instructions):
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/winNTFS -t ntfs-3g -ro umask=0222
I get this message:
WARNING: Old FUSE kernel module detected. This means, some driver
features are not available (swap file on NTFS, boot from NTFS by LILO),
and unmount is not safe unless you make sure the ntfs-3g process
naturally terminates after calling 'umount'. The safe FUSE kernel driver
is included in the official Linux kernels since version 2.6.20-rc1, or
in the FUSE 2.6 software package. Please see the next page for more
help: http://www.ntfs-3g.org/support.html#fuse26

The NTFS partition mounts successfully and I'm able to read files.  But
when I shutdown the system I get several screens-worth of error messages
zipping by, including:
umount /mnt/winNTFS    block devices not supported on fuse

which make me nervous.  Does anyone have insight as to what's going on?
Is this procedure for mounting a NTFS partition safe or am I risking
damage?  Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks for the help!  --Jerry