XP messing with linux partitions?

[Jonathan Berry]

On 6/4/07, Mike McCarty <Mike.McCarty at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Andras Simon wrote:
> > 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.
>
> [snip]
>
> > So my question really is: is there something to keep in mind when
> > partitioning a drive for XP/Fedora dual boot?
>
> I am not an XP install expert. However, this is what I have observed,
> FWIW.
>
> Most Microsoft products act as if they are going to be the
> only program which does any particular task, and cheerfully set
> themselves to be the default, or even the only, program for that task.
> WinXP is no exception to this rule. I believe WinXP creates a
> "rescue partition" in which it saves certain information so that,
> should things get mess up badly, it can get back to a bootable
> state. This may be the problem.

I have never seen it do that before (XP setup creating a
recovery/rescue partition).  I have only installed XP a couple times,
and have not installed from an SP2 disk, but I do not think this is
the case.  If it is, it must be a new feature on an SP2 install disk.
I'm pretty sure the rescue partitions on new computers are put there
by the OEMs, not XP.

I know I have created a single partition with fdisk for Windows and
told the install to use just that partition and not do anything else
(the rest of the disk was unused) and that worked just fine.

Of course, in none of this am I refuting your assertion that XP
assumes it is the only OS that will ever grace the surface of your
hard disks :-).

Jonathan