It would appear, after reinstallation that the problem was newly installed USB hardware (an optical mouse) that was causing the failure to boot, and nothing to do with the gparted.
-- Installing Ubuntu breaks Windows XP installation and ability to reinstall [I-Media 1507] https://launchpad.net/bugs/55447 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
