Actually, the problem is with the 2.6 kernel adjusting the size of the hdd during the installation process. This article explains it all, as well as providing the fix within Linux (ie: not using third party programs to fix). In fact, RedHat recommends NOT using third party programs to apply the fix because it has caused permenant loss in some cases.

http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/

Enjoy, and good luck!

if anyone has an old windows 98 disk.. do a:
that should do the trick.

Actually, this very thing happened to my machine when I installed Fedora Core 2. Fdisk was not able to fix the problem, as the problem is not with the MBR--it's with the cylinders on the HD being reported differently.

The fix that I posted should be the correct way to fix the problem caused by the 2.6 kernel.

to prevent this problem from occuring (i have done this on many systems) before you install a 2.6 based distro boot to knoppix and su to root and then run fdisk -l and take note of your dirves geometry, then when you first start the installation for the linux distro you will be at a boot promt

"Boot:"
Usually you can just press enter but instead type in linux hda=x,x,x where X is your hard drive geometry in the order of Cylinders, Heads, and Sectors, i believe the lwn article describes this better then i can, but you get the general idea.

I just Fdisked my whole hard-drive and re-partitioned how i wanted it and installed XP and it worked. I have a maxtor 40 GB harddrive and i installed the boot to the MBR and it worked flawlessly.

Reinstalling Linux now

to clean everythig from your hd (low level format) and fix everything do:
#dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
this if your hd is primary master
even if you don't have linux instaled you can do this with a boot disk (ex: slackware cd1)

next time try slack