I ran smartctl and it says "unrecognized" hard drive.
I recognized the hard drive the first time I ran the test. But now, it's unrecognized? How come? I don't know how or why this happens. Thanks. How can I get rid of this problem and the annoying icon?

I tried to run Windows, then started getting errors? This is strange: I've been running Linux the whole day. I last used the Windows hard drive was 2 days ago. Now its screwing up. Window is screwing up the hard drive? How can I fix this? Thanks. HDD has too many bad sectors. how can this be? I didn't touch it, I didn't do much on it, etc...??? I do not understand?! Please help. Thanks.

It sounds like your drive is probably going bad. If that is the case, there is nothing you can do other than backing everything up and getting a new one. Drives will go bad with old age, but they can also just randomly stop working due to manufacturing defects or possibly strong physical shock. I have had brand new drives fail within a year, so just because the drive might be fairly new doesn't necessarily mean it couldn't be malfunctioning.

The manufacturer of your drive will usually have some software on their support page that can test the drive and confirm it is defective. You will also usually need the error code reported by their software to process a return of the drive (assuming it is still in warranty, anyway).

I formatted and reinstalled Windows XP, and it works, I could even get it from Grub menu, BUT now nothing's normal: All the fonts are too big [doesn't let me change the settings in Properties/Display], it wouldn't detect my monitor, and forces me to use only 16 colors [I want to know how I can use at least 256 colors, but Freaking Windows won't let me.]. There's no way I can set/reset what's there. I knew there was nothing wrong with the hard drive itself, just freaking Windows fault: I hadn't touched it for more than two days, so it can't be my fault.

It wasn't like that before everything went haywire.

I know shouldn't post Windows related stuff here, but it's just a reply to what I've done. So, I had to come back into Linux and post this here.
Thanks.

There is nothing that Windows could do which would make the drive have problems with smartctl or have bad sectors. Reformatting the drive and being able to reinstall Windows doesn't mean that the drive is good at all. Nothing you have done would prove the drive is in good condition, and in fact all the problems you are having on the new install would seem to indicate some sort of corruption, which could easily be due to a bad drive.

You really should run the manufacturer's test software on the drive, it only takes a few minutes and will verify one way or the other if there is anything wrong with it.

My friend, I will now give you advice that others might find unwise, but that works in my experience. Don't bother with it. Even if you drive is having some horrible spinup retry count issue or something, usually it can be ignored for years. All the drives in our house report issues but a couple. The fact is you should back up your data and not worry about it until your drive dies in the likely distant future. If palimpsest is bugging you, remove it's startup notifications by removing disk notifications in system>peferences>startup applications.