I am dual booting windows xp and debian etch on my laptop. I have the laptop divided into two partitions, one for windows the other for linux. How do mount the windows volume on etch so I have read and write access and it will automatically mount everytime I start up?

If your Windows partition uses ntfs then it is (effectively) not possible to write to it from Linux. You should be able to read that partition though. This line in /etc/fstab mounts my Windows partition on /mnt/windows for me

If you are using a sata drive you'd have to use "sda1" instead of "hda1" in your /etc/fstab file. Personally I use something like this:

Before I do that I usually make a directory at the mount point

Then give write permision to the directory

Using 755 is probably lame, someone might suggest otherwise.

This doesnt seem to work. I tried eveything you said but the folder is still locked and I cannot access it without being root

In your File Manager, right click on the folder and check permissions. You may find the only owner has permissions. If so change the permissions of "group" and "others".

I am using Debian 2.8 kernel

you need fuse 2.5 or better installed

you will also need new driver called ntfs-3g

Be carefull as you may cause damage to your windows booting up if you have a dual boot system. I used this because my XP drive had corruption and I lost the CD making it next to impossible to use the XP drive for an XP system any longer. This allowed me to transfer files to and from the XP drive ntfs partition at will as root.

You may get an error when mounting the ntfs partition such as

"Volume is scheduled for check.
Please boot into Windows TWICE, or use the 'force' mount option."

I then used the following line with the force option as my drive had some serious corruption.

ntfs-3g /dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows -o force

Thanks guys. I got it. That seemed to have worked!