Okay i recently tried Debian Sarge (on my laptop), but failed to get it working with my USB Wifi Dongal, so i decided to revert back to Ubuntu ( i was using it before debian). I have installed Ubuntu loads of times without a hitch. My laptop as a matter of fact has had countless distros installed it. After install ubuntu, Windows XP wouldn't boot, it gives me an error saying it didn't shut down properly and gives me the option of Safe Mode and Normal startup, if i try Safemode it gets to loading MUP.sys (i think?) and reboots again. If i do the Normal startup it reboots just as it gets to the loading bar. I have had a similar problem to this before, and thought it was the MBR or something. So i installed Mandrake 10.1 (which had sorted similar problems in the past), it had an error about not being able to read the hard-disk, and offered to wipe the whole drive or to format my current ubuntu partition. It did so (taking its time when formatting?) and installed fine. I rebooted, and windows still isn't loading. When i try and boot my newly installed Mandrake install it says the file systems have to have maintenance, it gives me the option of Y/N, if i do N it'll reboot and ask again on reboot. If i say Y it'll ask for root password, then go into a repair commandline. I have read-only access to my hard-disks for some reason, however my drives are mountable. However from here i can't run any applications because it can't write to /tmp (being read-only access). Now knowing the hard-disk is pretty much fucked i decided to back up, i used DSL and turned my Windows PC into an FTP server, and uploaded data (easier than wrestling with Samba) Now everything is backed up, i attempt to do a complete clean install on the hard-disk with Windows XP, however when i get to the partitions part, it only reads my 35GB Windows Partition, and then underneath says "Setup cannot" read. I press enter to delete i get a joyful BSOD, about setup having some error, and it recommends i reboot if this is the first time i've seen it. I reboot and press D to delete partition instead and it gives the same BSOD. So i think Windows XP is having problems with the partition table. So i go back into DSL (my savour) and try fdisk hda, i get the response "Unable to Open HDA", Any ideas on how to fdisk/format the entire drive would be helpful!

Sortied it, after writing that and reading it back, i thought maybe i should put mandrake back in and tell it to wipe the disk, like it did last time. Guess what? result it worked. I can wipe the sweat off my brow now. However Mandrake won't stay on the laptop for long. Priority is to get Windows on first, so i can dual boot with Ubuntu again. And seems as i was impressed by DSL, it might end up with its own 160MB partition of its own, for recovery purposes ;-)

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Great!
Just remember to install windows first and not to mess to much with the bootloader when installing Ubuntu.