I have a dual boot system, Windows 2k Pro and RH8.0.

The basic problem I'm having is that in Windows, explorer.exe has some trouble with the ext3 partition that linux is installed on. The event log shows a message that Windows couldn't recognize the file system on the linux drive. Furthermose, whenever I pull up a file browser there is a 3-5 minute lag identifying the drives (for example, pulling up Windows Explorer gives me a searching flashlight icon for this amount of time, before it actually does come up all the way). I re-ran 3dmark2001se to see if this negatively impacted my graphics performance; no change. Just seems to be a problem with the ext3 partition.

I re-installed RH8.0 the other day, deleting the partition from within Windows before I ran the install (disk management, as well, takes forever to come up). The issues I'd been having went away completely--until I had recreated the partition through the RH install!

Here's my system setup:

hda1 (C 40GB Win2k Pro installation
hdd1 (F 8GB RH8.0 installation (250 MB swap partition on this too)
GRUB loader set to boot to linux by default (this works fine)

I've checked through Windows and can't find anything that is pointing to the F: drive, except, of course, the registry entry to assign the drive the F label...and if I'm not mistaken, Windows should recreate this if I delete it anyway.

Can someone shed light on this problem?

Many thanks

W2k will not recgonize a non windows partition. There is a program called explore2fs that will allow windows to view ext2 or ext3 partitions.

If you put a small FAT32 (or any Windows format) partition at the front of your drive (~ 250 MB), Windows will play nice. It will also give you a partition that you can share files with.

There is also a way to disconnect the drive in Windows, but someone who know how to do that will have to explain it.