I'm not 100% sure I understand your problem correctly, but no where in this
text do you mention running DOS fdisk command to resetup DOS partitions for
windows support. I'm not that familiar with the linux form of fdisk but at
least in the GUI disk convertors while they do a great job for linux
partitions and may offer to set up fat 32 for dos, well it never worked for
DOS for me. Try the DOS fdisk first and then format from the DOS disk as
well, then give loading winders a try again. If this still doesn't work
it's my opinion that you need to try the low level format or write test
using the hard drive manufacturers utility. All data will be lost using any
of these methods however. Don't mess with the low level format however
until you have exhausted all other possibilities as it has been a subject on
this list, that has in my opinion not been determined yet, whether or not it
potentially can harm the drive.
("I'm not sure if I just have really bad luck when it comes to harddrives,
but it seems that every time I install any flavor of *nix on a drive that
was formerly Winblows, I can't turn around and reinstall windows on the
drive again without it not working or being awfully unstable. I'm not sure
why this happens, it's a pity my 20gb drive no longer wants to work. I even
went as far as to go back in the installer on Redhat, get in the fdisk, and
create a new empty dos partition table, saved it, then rebooted, fdisk'd off
a boot floppy, created a primary partition, rebooted, formatted it, then
tried the installer. It didn't make it past the system checker thing at the
beginning of the installer, gave some weird errors about the drive. Anyway,
anyone else having this problem?")
