fat32 partition unrecognized by XP?
 

Hi everyone.
XP has trouble recognizing an FAT32 partition, XP thinks that its unformated. Mandrake can see it just fine, and its labeled as FAT32 under dracx disk utility.

I used to be able to see it just fine before installing linux, and I think I deleted some important partition data while installing linux. However, I didn't save the partition data to disk
(I think it might be important to note that the hd in question is 160 GB, but when formatted by windows is reduced to about 120 GB usable.)

I don't think its a "hidden" drive that I have seen elsewhere in the forums, because windows locates it but labels it as unformated. I'm wondering if there is any way to get windows to read it again? any help is appreciated.

Welcome to LQ.

Try opening up the device manager and go to the properties of your drive. Click on the populate button then you should see the partitions - make sure you have the correct one selected. If this doesn't work I would suggest moving all your data to another partition and reformatting under XP.