XP messing with linux partitions?

[Andras Simon]

I used gparted from the Fedora 7 Live cd to create several partitions
on my hd; sda1 for  XP, the others for various Fedoras.(I used the
Live cd for this so that I could also use badblocks on the linux
partitions and label them.) After installing XP in its partition and
then booting the Live cd again, fdisk showed one less partition (the
original sda2, a small boot partition, was gone), parted complained
about overlapping partitions, and gparted didn't show any.

I guess I could delete the linux partitions with fdisk, hoping that
gparted will recognize sda1, and then start creating the linux
partitions again. Or start all over again, install XP first and then
shrink its partition and add new ones with gparted. No big deal. What
worries me though is that XP can ever touch the other partitions, say,
during some updates; if this is so (and not a consequence of my
ignorantly doing something I shouldn't have), then it will have to
live in a KVM image and be forgotten.

So my question really is: is there something to keep in mind when
partitioning a drive for XP/Fedora dual boot?

Andras