Hello guys, it is 5am here in the UK so i am gonna cut it short:

basically, for the first time, i tried to install Ubuntu on my pc, hoping to make it dual-boot (winxp and ubuntu)

i have used the Ubuntu Live CD and i ran the partition tool in the process of installation.

i have originally 4 partitions:
and physically i have two HDD

anyway, so after the first install, i got this GRUB Error 18
which is, according to some posts i found on this forum, due to the BIOS being unable to handle the disk size etc.


So i want to roll back to windows XP with a good reason:
i am very busy and i dont really have time to spend hours figuring everything out

it turned out that i had to format C: using the windowsXP CD and re-install a fresh WinXP

i had four partitions:
C P G S

C P S are still here, but G is somehow un-readable by windows.

I am thinking that it is the Ubuntu partition tool that changed it or something.

Although i would still like to install ubuntu, is there actually any way i can recover the partition that is now un-accessable by winXP ? the partition was not formatted and the data is still there.

i will look into the GRUB Error 18 problem later when i have time and hopefully install Ubuntu so it boots alright.

However for now, i am really lost and need to recover that partition ASAP. please help me out on this one if you can, much thanks

HDDs larger than 32 gig can be problematic if the BIOS isn't set up correctly. The problems occur if an OS is installed beyond that 32 gig limit.

In the BIOS, check the disk sizes. There is one display which showes sectors, heads, and cylinders (which equate to disk capacity). In the display, there should be a value LBA. If it reads NORMAL, change it to LBA. If I remember correctly, you tab over to that field, then use the arrow keys to cycle through the possible values until you reach the one you want.

Then save and quit the BIOS to continue booting. From the content of your post, it sounds like one of the disks is set to NORMAL.

Just to backup what bigrigdriver posted.

I ran into the same problem on a new MoBo (Gigabyte ga-k8), disk set up on first page of BIOS was set to Auto, switching to 'LBA' did the trick.

eddie