Okay so I'm helping a friend fix his computer which is partitioned for OS reformatting, he has all his data on one partition and has another partition to use for OS's. The problem I am facing is that the windows xp installer detects his "data" partition as "C:" so it is not installing successfully. How can I fix this? I went into G parted and found that the extra space was labeled sda5 so I went ahead and fixed it, the data partition is SDA2 and the unallocated space SDA1. I figured that would fix the order the windows installer detected the partitions and therefore lettered them, that has not been the case.

Well from this description you can probably see how little I understand so please help me out.

-Mitch

Create an empty NTFS partition, and set the boot flag on. Make sure the data partition doesn't have the boot flag on.

sweet, once I read that I remembered doing it before. Its been so long. Thanks a lot!

And remember: Backups are your friend!
Captain V. Cautious

Worked great - thanks.