problem when installing xp in fat32

 you can't. but you can reinstall xp on the whole drive then install ubuntu while xp is running. then set the size of the you want to use for that os,easy. If you get stuck, there is a walk thru. It will start you at15GB. I am guessing that the ntfs format was about 160GB. Take 80GB for ubuntu/linux 'cause when you're on that,it'll say 240GB minus what was used on both operating systems. my desktop is 80GB(ntfs) but says 100GB left & I've used almost half of the drive on xp side.XP is only ntfs. let me know how it goes.

you don't need a partition editor. If you have Ubuntu 8.04,just insert it after you already installed XP

I have seen this problem many times. When you use partition editor to create partition formatted as FAT32 or NTFS, the partitioner will do this, but it does not fully format the partition. What is really does is create a raw data partition, which the windows installer has trouble seeing.

You will need to use different partition utility that will actually perform a true format that windows will recognize. I use SwissKnife on the UBCD for Windows. Unfortunately this has to be built with BartPE. I will see if I can find a suitable alternative and post links to it I can.