open up a terminal window and type          sudo fdisk -lu. If your windows partition is still there it will tell you. 

Thanks, it says this"     "Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders, total 390721968 sectorsUnits = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytesDisk identifier: 0xd5fdd5fd   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System/dev/sda1   *          63   384660359   192330148+  83  Linux/dev/sda2       384660360   390716864     3028252+   5  Extended/dev/sda5       384660423   390716864     3028221   82  Linux swap / Solaris"No sign of anything to do with Windows XP

We have a similar problem. We're new at this too.  My Husband partition the drive when he installed linux but now we cant get any of our files, etc from windows.  When I typed that sudo fisk -lu thing into the terminal window that the same thing that we got. What does that mean?  Does that mean that the rest of our drive has disappeared? In linux it says our hard drive is 30G just as he partitioned it so how do we get to the other 90G's? Help!

Considering the similarities of problems, a way to look at whether Windows is still there but not detected is to grab yourself a live CD (or burn one) for QTParted. This is a program that is freely available (check here: http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/) and you can use to create, move, or delete partitions. If you use the CD when booting your machine (provided your BIOS allows you to boot from a CD) then you can see all the partitions available on your hard drive. Your Windows partition will normally be of type NTFS or FAT32. If your Windows is still there, then you should be able to see it in the listing of partitions. To get access back to Windows, you have a number of choices available. One is to modify the GRUB boot options. These are found under: /boot/menu.lst <- that's an 'L' not a '1' To edit this run in terminal window: sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst Windows might be listed but not come up as an option at boot time. Instructions to fix this are here (at the bottom): http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/reinstall-ubuntu-grub-bootloader-after-windows-wipes-it-out/ If you have problems with that, then another option is to boot off of the Windows XP CD and select the option to Restore Configuration, go to the command line and type in the following: c:\> FIXMBR [enter] This will change the master boot record so that Windows loads again. The only problem with this, is that now Ubuntu disappears. But this can be resolved by doing the following: 1) Boot off the LiveCD 2) Open a Terminal and type in the following commands, noting that the first command will put you into the grub "prompt", and the next 3 commands will be executed there. Also note that hd0,0 implies the first hard drive and the first partition on that drive, which is where you probably installed grub to during installation. If not, then adjust accordingly. sudo grub > root (hd0,0) > setup (hd0) > exit Reboot (removing the livecd), and your boot menu should be back. I hope that made sense. If Windows is not listed in the partitions, then it is likely you have installed Ubuntu over top of Windows. You will likely lose your Windows data unless it was on another partition. In Ubuntu if you want to access Windows partitions, they should be already mounted under /media/ with the name of the partition. Example: /media/hdb3 As for formatting over top of Windows, if nothing more has happened, you should be able to roll back the format. If you have installed Ubuntu already, then the data has been overwritten and you've lost your files.