geommetrical harddisk error

have you ever heard of it?
all my years of working with PCs, this is the first time it was showed from my screen.
sure it was harddisk related error as the phrase says, but was it hardware related issue that pushed windows to show "hey, i cannot fix this since it is geommetrical error and am afraid to do something about it" message box or was it the OS?

sad to say, this was yesterday with one workstation a Compaq Evo. oh well, many crappy things from window$ XP, for years they are still fighting with it. another reformat and reload, duh.

would try Ubuntu with another partition this evening with the same system though i prefer rpm-based linux distro like fedora. am planning to try FC5T2 this weekend from my box at home.