How do I change permissions on root owned Fat32 Partition

[Fornhamfred]

Husse You've cracked it.

By changing the permissions in Fstab I am able to access the files from XP.

Thanks for your help.

[Husse]

Installing one more distro should not trash home. But if it's pretty close, but still very different (and yes this makes sense if you ponder it a while) it may trash settings in files by the same name, because home is "touched" during install

Oh - this is rather confusing taken literally

By changing the permissions in Fstab I am able to access the files from XP.

I hope you mean you are able to access the "XP files" from Linux as what ever you do in fstab does not change anything in XP

[Fornhamfred]

No. Having changed the permissions on the FAT32 partition on my Mint machine has now allowed me to open files in it from my XP machine across the network. The only difference which I now have from PcLinux is when trying to open Microsoft office files on the XP machine from Mint the splash screen for Open Office is displayed but the files do not open, I have had this problem a couple of years ago on another Linux distro but cannot remember what the solution was. I have posted this question under software.

[Husse]

Ah - I see
Across the network means in this case that the files are on a Mint machine so it makes perfectly sense
Had already forgotten that this was a networking issue