Having problems mounting new volumn/partition

[Mike Adolf]

I created a ntfs partition /dev/sda2.  I took my best shot at mounting 
it to a directory owned by me and one owned by root, and ,as usual, the 
complexities of mounting, killed my attempts. I just want it to show up 
on my desktop so I can read and write to it from both XP and Ubuntu.  I 
already added what's needed to write ntfs in linux.  It will contain 
data I want to use from both OSs. I am not trying to share it over the 
LAN just between dual boots.

Mike