Dual boot Win7 + Helena: Problems

[T J Tulley]

I'm using a new Dell 1750 Inspiron (Intel Dual core 2.2.GHz cpu, 500GB hd, 4GB RAM) which came with Win7 64-bit installed, mostly in a large NTFS Partition 3 labeled OS which I 'squeezed' to 78 GB using Disk Manager and created 3 partitions for Linux. That left over 40 GB unused in the Windows partition. Then I installed Helena, and copied my data files into the Windows partition at /users/theo/My documents and My pictures. This works perfectly well - in Linux.

The problems arise from the fact that in Windows, My Documents was reported to be empty; also, none of the Linux partitions show. Files which have since been created under Windows and placed in My documents show in Windows, but not in Linux.

Note however that the Windows system happily shows a backup copy of My Documents in an externally mounted hd connected via USB. That drive contains other logical drives formatted ext2 or ext3 - these are not visible under Windows.

I can normally hibernate back and forth between both systems.

To show Linux files in Windows it is necessary to install a program such as Ext2IFS or Ext2Fsd, about which there is a lot of correspondence found via Google searches. Some there report success, but the latest versions of these programs claim compatibility with nothing later than Vista. Ext2Fsd is still apparently a Beta version.

I did succeed in seeing ext2 and ext3 partitions and tried to add drive letters but although that facility also offered to change drive letters, I couldn't do that. Two apparently ended with 2 drive letters. Windows subsequently failed to start and the Start-up repair process was called into action several times - a time-consuming procedure.

[Edit: 4.50 p.m.] - The implied question is: has anyone else succeeded in making Win7 fully compatible with Helena - i.e. fully sharing data files?

Yours hopefully, -

[Using LinuxMint-8 with Windows-7 on a laptop with 2.2 GHz cpu and 4 GB RAM]



Theo Tulley.

[remoulder]

Is there a question in there someplace?

[T J Tulley]

Yes - I've added it in an Edit. Apologies - I thought it was clear that I need help with that problem.


Yours hopefully, -

[Using LinuxMint-8 with Windows-7 on a laptop with 2.2 GHz cpu and 4 GB RAM]



Theo Tulley.

[remoulder]

I don't have Win7 at home so no idea. Anyone?

[linkmint]

What I always do is mount the win%&/ 7 partition on Helena and then copy, view, etc data. I haven't have any problems so far, now if you're trying it the other way arround as a suggestion you can have one folder in win%&/ to share data between the two OS's, so in win%&/ 7 the folder is within the same OS and on Helena you simply mount the win%&/ 7 partition and do whatever you need to do, since I don't think givin win%&/ access to linux system files is a good idea. Hope you can solve your problem.