Is this:
A mistake (Windows Vista told me, after all),
A mess,
A non-issue as only MS OSs are restricted to 4 primary partitions,
A reason to wipe those 3 distros and 2 data partitions and start again?

I don't mind the destruction - my pathetic data is backed up - I was just taken aback when I stretched the 'disk Management' screen and saw the multitude of partitions were all primary, apart from the extended partition with 2 logicals in it, one of which, when formatted by windoze, generated 2 drive letter mappings.

Maybe it's Ext2Ifs - a utility to provide ext2 read/write access under windoze - that's re-branded them...

Linux DOES only work in the 4 primary partition model, doesn't it??

I have 14 primary partitions right now, no extended/logical partitions. I use bootitng as my boot manager which only creates primary partitions if you want more than four partitions. When I select an operating system to boot up, it re-writes the partition table so only the four or less partitions associated/configured with that particular OS are written to the partition table, the others are just seen as free space by the OS.
One of the partitions is called "Bootitng EMBR" and is only 7MB in size and is where the boot manager operates out of. If you don't have such a partition or a fancy boot menu when you first boot, chances are Vista is drunk or something. All "normal" operating systems expect to see no more than four primaries.
EDIT: Or your drunk and seeing double

Is this an EFI machine ???.
I don't have one, but the architecture might allow it if Vista was installed first, and all the partition creation was done from Vista.
All the Vista installs I have seen have been on BIOS based machines, so yes the 4 primary limit was still applicable.

Else you might have one unholy mess there fella.

Not necessarily. The 4 primary partition model is the intel-x86 model. Linux can be installed in other computing architectures too (older Macs, sparc machines, even mainframe-style computers, of course not binary compatible with x86).

Yes it's an ordinary P965 Intel board for the genteel poor so, yes, the 4 partition rule seems to apply.
And, yes, now that I've slept on the problem and checked with Partition Manager, they are seen by the extras as logicals. Phew

That Vista vista-ed it up seems the most likely answer. Vista-wit OS.

Just an aside for those who are blessed with a Vista-based machine: I have noticed that if I put a syntactically valid menu.lst file in the active primary partition that it loads ISO Vista's menu. Why? Because part of the Vista booting system seems to be grldr, the GRUB4DOS product (look - they're hidden, in C:\ and C:\Windows\Setup\Scripts). OSS at the start of the MS flagship! I hope Gates hasn't patented it yet...

Or have i got that wrong too??

You don't happen to run a cracked version of Vista, do you?

Windows can't normally make sense of Linux partitions, which is why it may show them as additional primary partitions (i.e. located outside out the extended partition). Since these partitions aren't mounted under windows, it doesn't make a difference and it can be disregarded.

Don't get fooled by the names. It is just the way Vista calls the partitions!

It might have something to do with the EFI but Vista works with existing 4-primaries but labels them differently or consistently for its own purpose.

Do you know, I do! Thanks, that explains grdlr which I couldn't find on a neighbour's Vista box (they're not easy to find!). The world makes more sense now.

Soon back to a real OS. I was just curious but not big-bucks-curious. It's a bit like Linux: dodgy drivers, unhappy programs and uneven implementations set to catch you unawares...**

Aspects of Linux are falling victim to escalating fiddle-factor-itis: GUIs having to do more and more, more and more coolly and programs, e.g. OOo, similarly trapped. Pity. What happened to modular programs? Mind you, even Firefox (v. modular) is a resource hog...


** he trolled, did