I have two hard drives on my system on which there are three DOS partitions. My system shows I have four, not three, (C:[MASTER], D:[SLAVE], E:, and F

DOS partitions when I boot up Windows. I cannot access the E: drive from Windows, but I can access the other three. I think there should only be partitions - C:[MASTER], D:[SLAVE], and E:.
The three DOS partitions show up when fdisk is invoked in both DOS and Linux, as shown in the printed tables below.
The first hard drive was partitioned using FIPS and fdisk for the DOS partition and fdisk under Linux for the other partitions. The second hard drive had a corrupted partition table, but the partition table was reconstructed from a copy. Linux fdisk was used for the partitioning.
I can access all partitions in Linux.
I have three questions:
1. Why is the C: drive listed under the third rather than first partition under DOS?
2. What causes the partition F: to appear? Maybe the partitioning procedure?
3. Do I have a DOS problem or a Linux problem, or both?
Here is the output of fdisk under various options of Windows 98 SE
****** Start tables
Change Current Fixed Disk Drive
Disk Drv Mbytes Free Usage
1 38162 18913 51%
C: 8244
2 12967 1 100%
D: 3812
E: 973
110
2134
Display Partition Information
Current fixed disk drive: 1
Partition Status Type Volume Label Mbytes System Usage
1 EXT DOS 8001 21%
2 Non-DOS 3004 8%
C: 3 A PRI DOS MASTER 8244 FAT32 22%
Total disk space is 38162 Mbytes (1 Mbyte = 1048576 bytes)
Display Partition Information
Current fixed disk drive: 2
Partition Status Type Volume Label Mbytes System Usage
D: 1 PRI DOS SLAVE 3812 FAT32 29%
E: 2 PRI DOS 973 FAT32 8%
3 Non-DOS 1004 8%
4 EXT DOS 7177 55%
Total disk space is 12967 Mbytes (1 Mbyte = 1048576 bytes)
Logical drive information for Extended partition
The Extended DOS Partition contains Logical DOS Drives.
Do you want to display the logical drive information (Y/N)......?[Y]
Display Logical DOS Drive Information
No logical drives defined
Total Extended DOS Partition size is 7177 Mbytes (1 MByte = 1048576 bytes)
****** End tables
Now, here is the output of fdisk under Linux.
****** Start tables
Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1051 8442126 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 1052 2071 8193150 5 Extended
/dev/hda3 2072 2454 3076447+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda5 1052 1115 514048+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 1116 1498 3076416 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 1499 2071 4602591 83 Linux
Disk /dev/hdb: 13.6 GB, 13601193984 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1653 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 486 3903763+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hdb2 487 610 996030 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hdb3 611 738 1028160 83 Linux
/dev/hdb4 739 1653 7349737+ 5 Extended
/dev/hdb5 739 752 112423+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hdb6 753 1300 4401778+ 83 Linux
****** End tables
Thanks.
James Oliver