NTFS problems
 

It's weird when I mount my ntfs partition I can copy from it but I cant open the file afterwards. I have opened the same file sucessfully under windows. It also wont let me change the file permissions when it's mounted to /mnt/ntfs. Hence only root can access the pertition. I am using 2.6.8-11 kernel.

The NTFS partition was created using windows xp professional.

Have you tried logging in as root and then change the permissions

of course I have it just doesn't make sence

Add umask=0 to the options in the fstab entry used to mount it, like so

/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs umask=0 0 0

you may or may not want to do anything to your NTFS parition. Write support isn't recommended in Linux(it can cause corruption etc.) I've heard some things about projects that are working on write support but I think they are experimental(read: not perfect, could still cause corruption)

still having problems

debian:/home/sc# chown sc /mnt/ntfs
chown: changing ownership of `/mnt/ntfs': Read-only file system
debian:/home/sc#

or is this normal ?

I cant access the ntfs partition without being root

Mine is doing the same thing. It's because you don't have experimental write support in your kernel. You probably don't want anything like that either, because it can(and very well may) corrupt information on there.