failing hard disk bad sectors error

You don't need Windows to check a disk for badblocks. Linux comes with a utility called "badblocks" as well as various filesystem tools like fsck.

First thing I would do, if you have a lot of time, is run fsck on the disk (warning this will take a whole day on a modern disk). In order to do this, the disk must be unmounted. So, the best way to do it is boot from the Ubuntu LiveCD and then open a terminal and type:
Code:
sudo fsck -pcfv /dev/sda
Where "sda" = the disk in question.

This command will force automatic bad block checking and it will automatically mark all known bad sectors as bad so that they wont "interfere" in the future. After you boot back into the OS, I would make sure that smartmontools is installed:

Code:
sudo apt-get install smartmontools
You will need to make sure that "SMART' capability is enabled in your BIOS. After you get it installed, then you can run an extended offline test (this will run in the background while the computer is on and you wont even know it is running). To do that:

Code:
sudo smartctl --test=long /dev/sda
And then to see the overall health of the system, you can type:

Code:
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
Also, please read the manpages for these programs if you want a more detailed explanation:

Code:
man fsck
man smartmontools