Distro Recomendation Please
Changes to a partition is just "merely" change the first sector on the disk;
Your real problem is that you didn't shrink the file system properly.
So parts of your file system lie outside the current partition definition - and can't be accessed - perhaps???
You could try resetting the partition to its old settings - if you think you know them.
Provided you only read things off of the disk you cannot lose data by accessing it.
This means that you must not boot an OS from the disk or write any data to it.
Try booting from CD and copying data off of the disk to USB (or to another drive).
Your real problem is that you didn't shrink the file system properly.
So parts of your file system lie outside the current partition definition - and can't be accessed - perhaps???
You could try resetting the partition to its old settings - if you think you know them.
Provided you only read things off of the disk you cannot lose data by accessing it.
This means that you must not boot an OS from the disk or write any data to it.
Try booting from CD and copying data off of the disk to USB (or to another drive).
Quote Your real problem is that you didn't shrink the file system properly.
So parts of your file system lie outside the current partition definition - and can't be accessed - perhaps???
You could try resetting the partition to its old settings - if you think you know them.
Sounds like that may of happened, I don't know the old file system and it's one I'm not familiar with as standard xp installs go. The answer may be in the recovery sector of the hard drive. I found that pressing f3 at boot up should enter into recovery mode and reset everything to factory settings, I'm hoping that includes the partitioning! Doesn't work for me though, still not sure why not. Possibility is that when I first setup this netbook I started a new installation which left the other installations in the boot menu. I edited the boot menu not to show these other operating systems but can't seem to find the files and folders that relate to these installs. They seem to go along the lines of windows(0) and windows(1). The current one I am using is windows(3) There is also a default. Perhaps I need to somehow be in the default os to run the recovery option and not an added one
Like I say, the files system is a bit weird. I used a partitioning bit of software to look at the drive and it shows a 4gig WINRE fat partition which doesn't show up in the computer drives section. You can view the files on there and there is a recovery exe. which sounds promising! I can't access these files or folders though they only show up in the partition software. Then there is a c;drive with OS_Install 40gig which is the part of the partition I roxed up and finally a 120gig d:drive which seems to contain the usual files and folders found in the c:drive of a normal install. The 40gig section is the boot drive. Nothing will run on this install_os drive even when it is not in use, i.e live cd. Running checkdisk on it even at boot up freezes at phase two after indexing and labelling loads of files unreadable. It fails on phase 2 of the checkdisc with an "unknown error" I can't defrag the drive using either windows own or third party defrag it just gets stuck at the same place. Gparted gets stuck at accessing drives and the live install gets stuck at the setting up partitions bit. Nothing I have will access this drive, leaving it all night just gets you up to an error message.
I read that formatting the drive would clear the dirty bit then put the files back but as mentioned previous when I copy the folder over to the d:drive there are so many files that need skipped it probably would be corrupt. Copying to a usb isn't really an option because the whole drive is 40gig size and like HB mentioned would probably need fixed before copying it anyway or I'm no further forward. All my bones are just telling me to go with the wipe and start a fresh like HB says, my only worry being that if I wipe and the ubuntu disc still has problems installing to the HD because of these bad sectors it can't read then I will end up with no working OS and have to buy a new HD. At least at the moment I have xp running and I have knocked of the discheck at startup. With a MS third party app and using the disk utility from the live cd I can see the HD is healthy. It's just this unwritten dirty section that because nothing can read it I can't seem to do anything with it.
Check you've copied as much data off the disk as wanted/needed though.
Cheers for the heads up fox, to be fair it's just a fresh install of xp last week and has no more than apps and updates on. Watch this space, going to start wiping it now so it could be a busy night 
Not going well at the moment, I got an erro5 problem using the desktop version and a failed check sum issue with the alternate
Going well now, got it installed just waiting for everything to update and feeling epic 
I had to re burn the alternative cd with ubuntu start up disc creator instead of unetbootin which seems to have solved the checksum problem. The only issue I came across was previously I set the parts up as reccomended, 1gig swap, 30gig ext4 / and 130 gig ext4 / home all as primary but in this install the 130gig was a logical and I couldn't find a way of changing it. From what I read there's no big difference anyway, sound right?
At least I feel like the computers mine now and I know what's on there
I had to re burn the alternative cd with ubuntu start up disc creator instead of unetbootin which seems to have solved the checksum problem. The only issue I came across was previously I set the parts up as reccomended, 1gig swap, 30gig ext4 / and 130 gig ext4 / home all as primary but in this install the 130gig was a logical and I couldn't find a way of changing it. From what I read there's no big difference anyway, sound right? At least I feel like the computers mine now and I know what's on there
Use gparted to make sure you haven't duplicated any partitions.
Are these real errors?