Hmmm,

I have been giving this some more thought, as it is a subject that has puzzled me for some years now.

We have all seen software that manages the boot up, they give you the option of which OS to use, and away you go. Some were very clever, and hid each OS installation from the others so they did not get jealous and start to squabble amongst themselves.

Modern developments along these lines would seem to be the "virtual machine" technology? there, they do not even know they are in the same hardware environment?

To get back to the subject:

We all know that to format a hard drive does not actually do a lot except set it as "available" for something new? so, I would think that there must be a lot of residual partition data left over, that is understood as "available" by one family of OSes, but possibly not, by another?

It would seem that Windows (family) "sees" these strange residual partitions and thinks that it is a hardware error? (it understands that it is partition information, but does not understand that it is a dead partition) On the other hand a linux distro recognises them (because they are linux creations), creates new, proper partitions, and everything is rosy?..............Windows sees a live partition and can live with that because it is alive?

I guess the answer is that Windows was not programmed with linux in mind.............hell, it even falls over itself in my experience.

That is why I recommended wiping the drive first.

Pure speculation on my part..............a bit too difficult and time consuming to prove, I am afraid