Debian :: Dual Boot Lenny With XP - XP Stops Booting ?

Have a little experience with backtrack 4, which is a Ubuntu distro. I'm changing to Lenny due to hardware limitations on my laptop, an older Dell inspiron 7000.

Here's the specs :
400 MHZ,
120 G HDD parted as C: = 20G (has bad sectors, left blank) and D: = 20G Windows part
128 Mb low density RAM
ATI Rage Mobility ( not sure of video RAM, I think 8 Mb)

Now I liked running BT and liked the linux work, so when the BT install went south I started to look for another linux distro I can run, the BT tools I use are linux after all. Here's where I hit my stump. I decided to go with the Lenny distro, it already has some of the tools I need, but the first time I installed I had the HDD like this 20G, 20G, 20G,20G, 17.??G. I had windows installed on C: (of course, no problems, yet)

After I installed lenny to D: via an iso I downloaded, the Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.6 "Lenny" - Official i386 xfce+lxde-CD Binary-1, BTW first install was from booting from the disk. After reparting, format, etc. of the install, GRUB boot loader detects my D: Windows, great. Reboot to GRUB boot menu, select ddebian, and it loads...cool, until I realize I don't have synaptic, the tools, and apt isn't going to work unless I can load the linux driver from the cdrom...which I can't find.

Reboot...windows, internet for answers I'm thinkin. GRUB loads fine, select windows and get the following error message "Windows can't start because of hardware configuration problems. Could not read from selected boot disk, check boot path and hardware. Check configuration manual for disk configuration."

It took three days to get Windows reinstalled, and a LL format (zerowrite the drive) but during the process I discovered a possible hdw issue...bad sectors on the C: hdd. Solution: C: 20G = unused, D: = Windows xp. Worked great. No more windows issues, so try it again. This time I used the disks installer from windows. Everything started great, boot menuselected debian, install-graphic, but this time I let the part manager create a drive, 20G from the free space an it appropriately made it's swapfile...when lenny booted it was good, but still no synaptic, cd/rom, couldn't browse the computer.

Reboot to windows to get instructions from someone that really knows what's going on...no windows. exactly same message as before. I was able to boot into debian okay, but couldn't find any drives, utilities, wasn't very much, but I needed my windows and the internet to get lessons. I am familiar with the terminal console and KDE. Can use apt for updating, but prefer using the synaptic. Why does my windows keep disappearing? If I can solve the dual boot issue I can learn the system casually. Right now my config is: C: = 20G, nothing here, still haven't run a scandisk either...next on todo list. D: = 20G Windows install...what I'm using now. I'm not going to attempt to reinstall debian until I receive a efinate answer to the dissappearing config, or boot capacity. Oh, yeah, Did try a fdisk/mbr and fix. this didn't bring it back either.