Help Please... I have loaded Linux 11.10 previously on my system along side Windows XP and never had a problem with the install. My current problem is that when I try to load Linux (I've tried both 11.10 and 12.04) I get a report at the beginning setup page: "The disk drive for dva / sda5 drive not ready or not present. Wait or strike S to skip mount, or strike M for manual recovery." I have tried all three options on separate efforts and all efforts have resulted in the same load/setup failure. As before, I'm using a partition on the same drive (C Drive, formatted NTFS) as windows.
What is the problem and (more importantly) how do I fix it? I will be glad to follow this thread OR receive email responses (if they are helpful). Thanks for being here and hopefully helping me in this dilemma.

Can you boot off a Linux CD/DVD and look at all partitions on your hard disk?

Sounds like you have a Ubuntu distribution, you can create a CD, DVD, or thumb stick with their ISO file and when you boot off that you get the option to run Linux from that media versus install it. Run from the media and it should attempt to mount your hard drive partitions. Either case, after all booted, get a terminal and log yourself in as root, there should be no password in this case. Then type

This will view the partitions on your SDA drive. Once you do that, I'd recommend you post it to the thread for further review.

There are file system tools which can be used to check your file system and repair it, but they depend on the type of file system which you have on your Linux partition.

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It seems the drive was the problem... Not sure if it was a bad MBR or what, however I resolved the problem by using a boot disk of "Easeus Partition Master", deleted all existing partitions, formatted the drive and reloaded "Ubuntu" and it's working perfectly. I will also add Kudos to the developers because I loaded "windows" first (which I still use due to familiarity) just for grins. Then loaded "Ubuntu 11.10 ( due to the user friendly ease of loading it alongside "Windows), and proceeded to do the online upgrade to "Ubuntu 12.04. Despite the almost unbearibly loooong time it took to do the upgrade (lol) it works perfectly now. Thanks for your help, even though I was unable to run the fdisk command line due to inability to get into terminal mode. You took the time to help me, and I really appreciate that!