My copy of 2000 is like 5 years old. It is CRAP at recognizing partitions and modern files systems. Of course a lot has changed since then. But Linux is always better at recognizing windows files systems than windows is at finding your Linux riser system. Unless you get a new release and even then Windows won't always work well. Why? The don't have too. They don't WANT too. Linux on the other hand must and does. Formatting a hard drive ties the logical structure of the disk to whatever file system you are using. A partition is a partition, it's under the format process. No partition or currupted table... no format. Heck you might have been missing a driver windows doesn't have and Linux does. Who knows. Too many variables. But I bet your linux distros are way newer than that windows burn. So a partition is a partition.... Unless you use a windows dynamic disk. I don't know WTF is going on there. And I do mean WTF?

Windows should recognize a partition unless you are using some wild ass new schema. Even if it doesn't know whats on the partition it should see it. Perhaps the partition table was corrupted. And using the windows wizard installer didn't like it. That's why we have hard drive tools. Windows likes it environment nice and cosey. But there are tools in windows that can manually handle a bad partition table. But they suck. That's why you should keep those manufacturer disks that come with hard drives. Or have a copy of UBCD. Besides kick ass hardware tools.... its "special" and loaded knoppix distro comes in HANDY.

/EDIT oh and I kind of agree with Tiger. Personal box, no big deal. But if that HD was going into a mail server or something else critical.. it would meet my BFH and a trash can.