help with formatted disk
 

when i was installing ubuntu 8.1,,, i choose a manual installing,, i have a 160gb hard drive (22 gb used, this is my Xp disk),,, i tried to create a new partition and i made a 30gb ext2 partition,, but when i clicked next there was an error,, and the partition was not created, so i rebooted my pc, but when it was restarting, there was not an operating system XP installed,, is it posible to fix it?,,,,, as i remember i didnt choose any format option

If you are very lucky, you may be able to stick in your XP cd and select the repair option.
If you don't have an XP CD, boot ubuntu as a live CD and see if it detects the XP partition. You can probably at least burn files to a CD or plonk them on a memory stick.

If none of those work, then I'm sorry, your XP partition has gone to silicon heaven and getting data back is going to be either:
a) Much harder to get back intact.
b) Easy but expensive to get back.

When you have the Ubuntu (liveCD) running, post (all) the output of this from a terminal session

Try to use testdisk, it's included in many livecds, like this one:

http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/

It's very efficient when it comes to repairing broken partition tables. So, if there's any chance to reconstruct it, it might be this way. You might as well need to restore the windows bootloader.

The correct method to fix this is to get your hands on a Windows 95/98 CD, and locate the file called "FDISK".

Run fdisk /mbr for it to rewrite your master boot record. You will loose your Linux partition, but you will keep Windows and you will be able to boot into Windows again.

Regards,
Jacques