Did a coupla installs dual boot with winme, after creating umpteen DOS partitions,but leaving about 13Gb free on hdd2:
First install halted, reporting GET THIS!-"Partition Table
Corrupted!"[by Windows?].Now here's the kick in the head-
Deleted all partitions except the extended partition,and attempted to install Linux behind it-That went well after several attempts.However-Now fdisk can't delete the extended partition and only reports Linux tables...
AS LOGICAL DRIVES ON AN EXTENDED DOS PARTITION!Okay so I'm looking at all of this now from within winme,and just deleted a non-dos partition.Was that Linux?I dunno yet...
Stay tuned.

Yes, that was linux.
Once you deleted this partition, you should leave it alone then start the Linux install. Windows won't see the space freed up on your HD, but Linux will do just fine. If you use Disk Druid in the Linux install, you'll see your DOS part as hda1. Just create a new partition there without touching the DOS part (that would be your windows). Make sure you create a boot disk, some dual boot systems don't like to recognize the Linux parts and you may need one to get back to your new linux install. Hope that helps