My partitions are effed up.

[Poohblah]

I have a 120GB HDD with a 22GB partition for Ubuntu and the rest for Windows XP. Windows finally died on me so I attempted a fresh install on its partition. However, the install threw a ton of errors so I used a LiveCD to re-install Grub and I booted into Ubuntu. I open up the disk utility to re-format the Windows partition so I can re-try re-installing Windows, but immediately I notice that the partitions are not right. If you add up all the partitions, they are about, say, 18 million terabytes over my HDD's 120GB capacity. Ahhh! What do I do? I don't think anything is terribly altered, since I can still boot into Ubuntu, but I am completely confused and slightly worried that I might kill any chances to save my HDD if I try to fix this problem without help.

Well. I can't post a screenshot due to my post count, so the image loses some of its efficacy in making it small enough for an attachment. Here is the output of fdisk -l:

omitting empty partition (5)

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe686f016

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1           6       48163+  de  Dell Utility
/dev/sda2   *           7       11294    90670860    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3           11295       13987    21631522+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4           13727       13987     2096451   dd  Unknown
/dev/sda5           11295       13360    16595082   83  Linux
/dev/sda6           13362       13726     2931831   82  Linux swap / Solaris

If I am not mistaken, all the non-empty partitions add up to over 120GB. Something is not right.

[D-cat]

Blocks are not bytes. What I'm looking at above is okay. I can't really read the screenshot (upload as a jpg to avoid the auto-shrinking).

When you say you are trying to do a fresh install, do you mean of Windows? I'd try booting into the Dell Utility partition (usually an option from BIOS). If you haven't nuked it, there should be an option to restore "factory condition" Windows. I don't think it'll kill your Linux partition, but I'd have your important data backed up anyway.

[Poohblah]

Blocks are not bytes. What I'm looking at above is okay. I can't really read the screenshot (upload as a jpg to avoid the auto-shrinking).

When you say you are trying to do a fresh install, do you mean of Windows? I'd try booting into the Dell Utility partition (usually an option from BIOS). If you haven't nuked it, there should be an option to restore "factory condition" Windows. I don't think it'll kill your Linux partition, but I'd have your important data backed up anyway.

So I'll explain what disk utility is saying. My computer used to have five partitions. DellUtilities, "MediaDirect" (I have no clue what that even is), Windows, Linux, 3GB swap. Now it says it has eight: the same as above, but adding a 17GB "free space," a 5GB "free space," and an 18 million TB "free space" (all at /dev/sda).

Yes, fresh install of Windows. Booting into the Dell Utility partition is not an option at BIOS. I can only boot into Grub or from a CD drive. edit: Whoops, nevermind. I can boot to the Dell Utility from Grub. When I try to do that, it returns an error concerning a corrupt .dll file.

A corrupt .dll doesn't explain why my partitions suddenly changed, though.

[D-cat]

Inside the Dell PC Restore Partition

Translation: nuke Vista and you lose access to the recovery image, since you need to at least get to the recovery environment first.

The graphical disk manager is on another planet. The fdisk -l output above is correct, sans the idea that a 10GB windows image is going to fit on a 5 sector partition. I don't know how that happened, but your Dell recovery/utility partition is probably useless and its continued existence is only so BIOS doesn't complain. Times like these I have the inclination to wipe the drive and start from scratch. Windows install hates the idea it might have to share a drive with a d@mn3d hippie (Linux). I don't like the idea that there might be some MBR corruption that the Linux kernel can ignore but other utilities don't.

You could try booting the Windows disc to the recovery environment command prompt and typing bootrec.exe /fixmbr, then restarting the install and see if it works, pointing it to use (and format) only the existing NTFS partition. You will of course have to reinstall grub afterwards.

[Poohblah]

Thanks. I think I understand now. So you think the weird partitions in the GUI disk utility are due to a bug in the GUI? Also, would you happen to know what the sda3 partition is? I recognize the others.

Windows throws errors when I try to use the recovery environment (or did you mean the recovery environment on the Windows install CD?). So it seems that wiping the drive and starting over would be the best bet (after backing up files of course) but do you know where I can learn how to do this properly? Can I simply wipe the whole drive using a utility from a Ubuntu live CD and then start over with the Windows XP install CD? I get the general feeling that I shouldn't... like that deep sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach...

[D-cat]

Yeah, boot from the CD. I don't see how the hard drive Windows data is in useful condition.

The sda3 is an "Extended" partition. The standard MBR can only allocate 4 primary partitions at any given time. The extended partition acts as a container for logical partitions. In this way, you can have many more partitions wrapped up inside the extended partition. The primary difference is that the BIOS doesn't recognize the logical partitions, so you can't boot direcly from them. If you boot from the MBR with a manager that can load a kernel directly, (e.g. GRUB or LiLo), you get around this limitation. Windows loads off a boot sector, so it has to be in a primary partition. Linux can load from a file (usually a ramdisk image containg a base kernel), so it's happy in a logical partition as long as a bootloader can access it.