Hi,
I was having a 75 GB Hard disk, and before I installed linux I did have 4 partitons and windows XP. For installing the linux (Fudora Core -2) I deleted the last logical partition (So i was left with 3 partitions in windows), and I installed Linux with GRUB. It was installed successfully. But when I boot using Windows Xp, when I try to access my last logical partiton, it says unformated disk. Can I recoved my partition?
I think GRUB must have altered my partiton table. One more thing when I was installing Linux, it said unaligned partition table.
Thanking U.

We need to see the partition Table itself -
if you would boot into linux for me and then switch to the root user (using either sudo or su) and then issue the command (at the terminal window) "fdisk -l" (without the quotation marks) and post the results.

As u asked I am posting the details of partition table below:

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80060424192 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 155127 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 20799 10482381 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 20799 155104 67689877+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 20799 62412 20972826 b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda6 62412 104025 20972826 b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda7 104025 124342 10240240+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 124343 153071 14479384+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda9 153072 155103 1024096+ 82 Linux swap

Disk /dev/sda: 82.3 GB, 82348278272 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10011 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 10011 80413326 b W95 FAT32


Waiting for Reply
Thanks

Oh the old Windows can not handle Linux partition crap. Windows can not read Linux partitions. If you do see unformated partitions from Windows and you have installed Linux, just ignore the error. If you do format them, Linux will not boot because it is completely gone from the formatting.

Yes, Linux allocated the last unused portion of the disk. You may lost some space from desire size in megabytes instead of the desire cylinders. The partition table starts and stops at cylinders. It is better to work with cylinders when making partitions to get the full use out of the drive.

You gave about 23 GB to Linux. That is overkill on a dual boot system. Also you made three partitions and this still overkill for a dual boot system. For Linux you just need two partitions. You can get by with one partition if you have about 512 MB or more of RAM. Linux should not be any bigger than 10 GB since you have a bunch of drives and they are formated as FAT32. Linux is able to read and write to them.

If you think the installer messed up because you gave up drive G for Linux and you kept C D E F for Windows, then all I can say your files are history when you see C D E. IMHO, Redhat and Fedora are dumb picking partitions and they do on the fly partition creating, so you have to quadruple check its settings before hitting the ok button. Mandrake is fool proof because it picks the correct partitions and it never writes the partition table unless you are done. Mandrake has a visual presentation of the partition table. However, I do not suggest Mandrake 10 or Mandriva 10 although I suggest Mandrake 9.