im dual booting XP and Mandrake 9.1. mandrake reads all my old files from the NTFS partition of windows, but it can't write to it, and windows doesn't recognise the Linux partition.

i tried to make a third partition that both linux and windows could read/write to. i used the mandrake tool to make a FAT32 partition, and mounted it, but when i try to copy files to it it wont let me.

then i booted XP and it didn't recognise the FAT32 drive either.

so i erased that FAT32 drive, and made another one using bootIT from floppy, and still neiher OS recognises this mediator partition.

how can i make a drive that both OS's can read and write to?

better make a fat32 from winxp. I heard that Winxp can't recognize the fat32 linux makes. But linux does recognize the winxp fat32 and can write to it. Just use fdisk or partitionMagic in XP.

i did it from XP and it still isn't working.

I assume you tried to mount the fat32 partition. Can you post the error message?

There is a program called ext2fs that will read your linux partition from windows.

agh, everything is just totally messed up now. i repartitioned and deleted, and made new partitions on top of old ones so many times that there are just tons of useless and incorrect partitions all over the place, and big empty spots... i used like three partition programs, and none of them agree on the state of my partitions.... agh. i just messed everything up. im going to wipe everything clean and start over.