I have windows, mandrake, and fedora core 4 on one hard disk
I want to copy files from windows and mandrake using fedora

I a long time ago I used to edit
the fstab file and add a few entries

for mandrake I put in this
/dev/hda5 /mandrake ext3 defaults 1 2

and for windows I put in this
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs umask=0022,nls=utf8,ro 0 0

then on the command line do a >_exportfs

I think fedora has changed to using a fstab-sync
program, but I dont know how to use that program to
add the other two partitions.

can someone point me in the direction of a tutorial
or quickly explain how to add the other two other
partitions to the file system so I can read the files.

Disregard the bit at the topof /etc/fstab . You can edit it directly in any text editor.

I editeded the file and did the exportfs
but the files dont show up

This works on my system, linux can read ntfs partitions , but there are apparatly many problems with writing to them. with the fat32 partition, Ican doanything,ad with linux commands!
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win vfat nodev 1 2
Hope this helps.

I got the mandrak partition working but
the windows xp wont mount because it says unknown file system

I went to the /etc/filesystems
and added

ntfs

is there a way to add the ntfs support during the instalation

you cannot mount the ntfs partitions during instalaltion of fedora but can mount after installation read this link .