I've had a similar problem before but it never really got resolved, i just got around it. here's the brief:

I was previously trying to install XP Pro on the main system shown in my signature. I've done it many times before but for some reason things got messed up this time around.

Normally when I decide to reformat my computer and do a fresh install of XP this is how I go about it: boot up with a start disk, type: format c:\, and then after all that type setup, boot from the xp install disk and it's all good from there. at the partition screen of set up i choose to use up all the space and install in ntfs format. But it also shows that it uses about 69 gigs and leaves 8mb unpartioned space.

Now when my problems began I was trying to do my routine format but I now ran into a few speedbumps. When I went to format it said "format not supported on this disk". So I went into FDISK and went to read partition tables but it reported that there were none. So i created a primary dos partition. after it went through that (I chose to use all available space) it only said that there was a 5348mb (approximate size) partition. To work around this I skipped booting from the start disk and skipped formatting and just booted from the XP cd, let it partition the entire drive there and continue with the install and i assumed everything would be fine from here on out. But of course, it still left 8mb of unpartitioned space.

Presently I face a new problem. I'm trying to install Slackware 10.1 now and unfortunately it's not as easy as having it partition itself as one big drive etc etc. Once again I face the same problem when going to partition the drive for my swap, /usr, /opt, and /root directories etc. I go to create the primary partition and lo and behold it starts at cylinder 1 and ends at 80 once again reporting a size of around 5348mb. Seems to me that only that 8mb unpartitioned space is available to work with! whats the deal here?! what have I messed up?

Please take note that this is a WD Raptor SATA so with Xp I've had to install promise drivers etc before proceeding with XP install but I don't think I'm quite at that point in my Slackware install, I can't get the partitioning worked out! I appreciate all your time and effort to help me out! take care!

You should need drivers to recognize your SATA disks in both Windows and Linux, so you're probably in some IDE compatablity mode. Go into the bios setup and get out of it and into raid mode. Specify the sata.i kernel on your Slackware install and install to /dev/sda. You should see the whole thing.

Mike

im getting this error message when trying to use fdisk from the slackware cd after booting with sata.i:

You will not be able to write the partition table.
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table nor Sun, Sgal, or OSR disk label.
Building a new DOS Label. Changes will remain in memory,
until you decide to write them. After that of course the previous
content won't be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

My first instinct would be to let fdisk fix the problem. You want a "fresh" disk anyway and obviously the partition table has been written over. I've had a similar experience and found that fdisk is smart enough to do the "right thing".

Mike