Dual boot (XP and Linux) - Newbie Linz

[Lindsay]

I have a PC that Ubuntu destroyed bu XP partition on and I have
installed Mepis with the aim of getting it re-partitioned.
However qtparted shows the Xp partition hda1 as free and hidden.
Even though I have selected this partition under operations all
operations are greyed-out accept Properties which doesn do much.

I have to reactivate that partition as XP which just not go on any other
partition no matter how hard I try.   I have created anther NTFS
partition by it will not go on that.  I have tried Fdisk with DOS and it
wont change it.  I would prefer is as FAT32 but cant even do that.

Some idea's please.   This has been an on going problem for two months
at least now.
Linz