Cannont mount volume on HDD? Also partitioning help!

[StaticSpaz]

---I have to pics attached to this thread, one is the error I get, and another a picture of how my HDD is partitioned.---

I've got two things here... one was:
I tried to partition my hard drive with stupid vista, and it gave me an error after a while saying it couldn't do it and canceled it. (I just wanted to shrink it by 40GB to let ubuntu install on it.)
So it restarts my computer and now it won't boot vista because i get some system repair crap that also errors and says it wants to restart. Basically i'm stuck in a loop here... And now when i start up with ubuntu (LiveCD) i can't access my hard drive because it "Can't mount volume on HDD"
What the heck is this?!
EDIT: Can you tell me why i have so many partitions by the way? And what the heck they are for? I don't see this many when i look at pics in tutorials...

Also I was wondering if there is any tutorial on good ways to partition your HDD for ubuntu. Or if someone can just help me :)

Thanks!

[Mark_in_Hollywood]

---Also I was wondering if there is any tutorial on good ways to partition your HDD for ubuntu. Or if someone can just help me :)Thanks!

I cannot help with the Vista, I don't know it. Please backup any data, files & stuff you cannot live without.

As for Tutorials:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-gparted-to-resize-your-windows-vista-partition/

and

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/index.php

Sorry I can't give you more. Go slow with this and you won't hurt your data.

[StaticSpaz]

Ok cool thanks!!!

Now i just need help with accessing my HDD...
I don't want to partition anything until i can actually access it.