Complex Partition Issues

[antihero]

Hey everyone!

My Dell e1405 laptop, which I bought 2 months ago, came partitioned like this:

Partition 1 - Diagnostics partition (vfat)
Partition 2 - XP partition (ntfs)
Partition 3 - Dell Media Direct partition (vfat)
Partition 4 - Restore partition (vfat)

I left the default partitions in tact but shrunk the XP partition and installed Ubuntu. Both operating systems have been working flawlessly for 2 months.

The other day, when I booted up, it said something about Media Direct (maybe I hit the MD button?) and then gave me a blue screen of death:

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. Plug and Play detected an error most likely caused by a faulty driver. If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, follow these steps: Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed. If this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any Windows updates you might need. If the problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode. Technical information: *** STOP: 0x000000CA (0x00000001, [PART THAT GOES HERE CHANGES @ EVERY STARTUP], 0x00000000)

The only thing I've done recently is install the K-Lite Codec pack on Windows.

Now I can't boot into Windows at all. I can't boot from the Windows installation CD either - same blue screen every time.

All of the hardware diagnostics come back clean. I tried booting with pretty much everything in the BIOS disabled, only Dell's ram, no optical drive, etc,. I called Dell and they had me repeat everything I already tried, then blamed it on Linux and said I should reformat my entire harddrive.

Ubuntu still works great but my partition table is really confusing me. I'm wondering if someone can help me interpret this. In addition to the Windows NTFS partition and dell's 3 vfat partitions, I created ext3 /, ext3 /home, and linuxswap.

I'm wondering if I have too many partitions and that's what is causing Windows to die. Also, when I run GParted (I wanna wipe out all non linux partitions) it just shows the entire disk as unallocated!!

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 13727 13987 2096451 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/sda2 * 7 3654 29302560 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda3 3655 13987 82999822+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/sda4 13988 14593 4867695 db CP/M / CTOS / ... /dev/sda5 13727 13987 2096451 dd Unknown /dev/sda6 3655 6086 19534977 83 Linux /dev/sda7 6087 13599 60348141 83 Linux /dev/sda8 13600 13726 1020096 82 Linux swap / Solaris Partition table entries are not in disk order

Thanks for any tips!!