Sorry about the rushed reply.
Right, here's the long story. I appreciate that you guys think it wasn't PHP, and maybe you are right. But, directly after compiling PHP on both occasions, my part table was wiped, so there is something to do with that and it is killing my system.
The first time, I decided to upgrade to PHP 5.1.1. I wanted to install libcurl with PHP anyway, so I needed to recompile. The compile and build worked successfully and all my PHP pages would work. I then downloaded Anyweb's Windows Vista video (
[/url][url=http://anyweb.kicks-ass.net/computers/os/w...os/switcher.avi]http://anyweb.kicks-ass.net/computers/os/w...os/switcher.avi) and needed to reboot into Windows to watch it (I don't have Mplayer or anything).
I rebooted, and GRUB was gone along with all the partitions on my first hard drive. I managed to boot into my image copy of Windows once (and only once), and on this one occasion it could see everything (well - everything that Windows can see ;) - I wish I'd taken a screenshot of Disk Management). I backed up the most important things, but not knowing that Windows would not boot again, I lost data.
A reinstall of Windows was in order, and I've spent most of this weekend getting programs back on my system. :( It comes the time for Linux to be installed, so I back up my nice new Windows installation first.
Linux installs fine and rebooting just after the install shows that Windows still works. So, I go for it and rebuild PHP 5.1.1 (yes, I checked the MD5 sum). It appears to work fine. Rebooting shows: my bootloader is gone again and so is everything on my first hard drive :( .
Obviously, I don't have a Linux installation to play with right now, and it's a bit inconvenient to be reproducing the problem all the time, because it's a real fiddle even to recover this backup of Windows. [img]<___base_url___>/uploads/emoticons/default_dry.png[/img]
So, what is doing this? It must be either PHP or something to do with it. o_O
Needless to say, I'm not putting PHP backo n my system until I know it won't do this again. (Interestingly, I've run version 5.0.5 for a long time with no problems).
EDIT:
My current Windows disk management screenshot. As you can guess, the unallocated space contained Windows data partitions (two I think) and Linux and Linux swap.