Weird partition arrangements and broken GRUB

Hi,

After reading dozens of GRUB tutorials for a good few hours and not
getting anywhere, I've decided to post on this mailing list regarding
my problem. If it has been covered before please pardon me, I really
can't see it :(

Now before I start, I'd like to point out that we are both debian
users both due to the nature of our work, we have to have a windows
installation on our machines. Sad but true :(

A friend of mine brought in his laptop after he said he couldn't get
'windows booting', and when I had a look at the partition table using
gparted, I was presented with the following monstrosity:

screenshot:
http://***image.***bayimg.***com/oaeikaabk.jpg
(please get rid of the 9 stars, the mailing list wouldn't accept my
message without these)


(for the text based readers), it looks a bit like:
/dev/sda1 fat32 (boot)
/dev/sda2 extended (lba)
/dev/sda5 ntfs (boot)
/dev/sda6 linux-swap
/dev/sda3 ext3

The first fat32 partition is the recovery files that came with the
laptop, the rest is a bit of mess really :)

Relevant bits from /boot/grub/menu.lst:

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.18-4-686
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-4-686 root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img- 2.6.18-4-686
savedefault

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.18-4-686 (single-user mode)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-4-686 root=/dev/sda3 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img- 2.6.18-4-686
savedefault

title Microsoft Windows XP
root (hd0,3)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

title Acer eRecovery Management
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1


I've tried all the possible combinations for the root directive of the
Windows section, but it doesn't want to load windows.

Is there any way I can address the ntfs partition within that extended
partition, or do I need to modify the structure. (I'd very much prefer
not changing the structure, even though it is quite messy)


I am stuck so any help would be much appreciated.

Many thanks.
Hamza


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