I suspect that I was having my leg pulled really really hard but I'll ask it anyway...
I had it mentioned to me a while ago that there was a program out there that somehow allowed linux and windows to run simultaneously on a single PC from multiple partitions.

This apparently allowed a PC to run a Windows GUI up front as a fully operational operating system and utilize the samba functionality to access the linux file-system and the fully functional linux configuration was running in the background as a server.

Has anyone else ever heard of anything like this?
if not, does anyone know of any windows orientated software that allows windows to access & read the file-system of a linux partition on the same local hard drive?

VMWare is what you're looking for. It's not cheap but it actually works.

Håkan

thanks for that, I'll check it out