Don't trip up XP by partitioning ahead of installing XP. XP likes blank drives.
I have an Intel D845BG mobo with a P4 1.8 GHz that had been a running XP system until the HDD died. I installed an HDS/IBM 80 GB HDD (IDE) that had been a secondary drive in another XP system. Debian Linux installs and runs just fine on the HDD. I decided to make it a dual boot system which means (I think) that XP has to be installed first. I am using a Windows XP Full Home Edition with SP2. It doesn't matter if I give XP the entire drive or attempt to partition it into smaller pieces (as small as 8GB), the format function (Quick or slow) always ends with the error message " setup was unable to format the partition, The disk may be damaged. Make sure the drive is switched on and properly connected to your computer..." and then talks about SCSII. I ran the HDS/IBM Drive funtion tests - no errors. I used Super Fdisk to format the drive with no errors. Why can't XP format the drive and use it?

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