Access Linux partitions (ext2, ext3) from Windows Vista

No workie. You can only install the driver in XP compatability mode, then Data Execution Prevention prevents it from working.

It does not work because of the STUPID Data Execution Prevention (DEP) in Vista locking the rundll32.exe. So this is what you need to do:-

1. Go to Computer -> right click -> select Properties -> select Advanced System Settings -> click Continue -> select Advanced tab -> select Settings tab under Performance -> select Data Execution Prevention tab -> select Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select: -> Add - rundll32.exe file in System32 folder... You need to restart your computer after this.

2. After restart... go to Control Panel..., press SHIFT then right click on the IFS Drives icon and select Run as... it will take sometime for Vista to process this... then select continue and Wa Laa! you are in the IFS menu!

Conclusion... VISTA SUCKS!!! Long live UBUNTU!

Please do it at your own risk...

I'm stuck early in the game:

"Once you have on your Vista disk, right click on it and select compatibility for XP Service Pack 2 as shown on this picture."

Click on WHAT? I'm trying to look for some kind of thing to interact with that the install left on my system, but I'm getting nothing like what the images show. Can someone point out what I'm overlooking? Thanks.

WARNING!!!

This driver works in Vista BUT later I had terrible problems with corrupt data in my linux partition.

SYMPTOMS
1. When linux boots, it complains that there are file system errors on the EXT3 partition.
2. Some applications does not run, some files (JPGs) are shown strange.
3. The GUI does not start if your home directory is corrput.
4. Linux does not boot at all if the root directory is corrput.

I recommend - DO NOT use it.

Thank you!
This page was very helpful to me!
At the moment no problems at all with corrupted data. :)

Thank you so much. I love that you found how to work this on Vista.

It just BSOD's my system out using this method.

It adds a minute to shutdown time.
I tried this just enough to see that it works under Vista...
It seams to work as far as I can tell, except for
in the sessions where this is used, a minute or so is added to the Vista shutdown time.
(where nothing seams to be happening)
I do have DEP off for the most part.

I used it and it worked out very fine in very first time there is no need of doing Data Execution Prevention (DEP) in Vista, just assign drive letters and enjoy :)
i used release date:01-28-2008
Gr8

Everything works fine except that I can assign drive letter only to the boot partition on my linux. I am not able to assign a drive letter to the actual linux "filesystem" partition. When I run "IFS Drives", the pop-down menu for drive letter is available only for the boot partition. Anybody else had this issue?

Logical volumes does not work - I found out after digging around a little bit that this program does not support Logical volumes (even though the underlying file system is ext2fs). :( I was excited for a little bit but now I have to go back to rebooting to access linux files.

ok, i got it to install everything and the drive letter shows in vista. however, when i double click the drive, windows asks me to format it. any ideas how i can make it work without formatting and erasing all data?

I use Vista and I didn't have to change the compatibility mode, or reboot. And it worked fine.

When I try to open the drive I get "Drive:/ is not accessible The parameter is incorrect." I'm using Vista home premium SP1.

I'm not risking to give read/write access on ext3 from vista. If is there a program that I can use it only when I need it, and has support for journalling and htree..

Well, the 1.11 doesn't work in Vista, the older one works (1.10c).

Download it here:
http://www.fs-driver.org/extendeddl.html

I'm having kind of the same problem, I have full access to my ext2 drive, but when I try to launch an .exe file from the ext2 partition if show an error "Wrong Parameter"

I went to see if v1.10c couold work but it doesn't on Vista x64 :s

Does anyone have an idea?

Thanks.

My experience with reading/writing ext3 partitions from Windows (XP) was a bit hair-raising at times. In general, it wasn't too bad, but still unnerved me enough to not try it again.

Using both the 1.10 series and 1.11 release of Ext2ifs caused minor errors and inconsistencies on my Linux partitions, even if I hadn't written any data to them. The odd file would copy over corrupt (or not be there when viewing the partition from Linux), and during the boot process Fsck would usually pop up and say there were errors on the disk. To the best of my knowledge, I never actually lost any data that Linux had written to the partitions... but I know other people that have. It was all just too unreliable for me to risk using.

Trying Ext2fsd (0.37-0.42 I think), I didn't have so many errors or problems, but the interface and drive-letter allocation wasn't as convenient, and after my experiences with a post-1.0 program, I was suspicious of one that was still in pre-1.0 status. The developer also started supporting ext2/3 symbolic links, which meant that certain windows programs such as virus scanners would think that they were real files/directories and go into an infinite loop as they followed the links 'round and 'round... Yes, it's technically the 'correct' thing to do but it's not very convenient when the best way to find viruses/rootkits on a system is to scan it from another (known-clean) one.

The other problem I had from giving Windows write access to Linux partitions, is that it automatically created a recycle-bin folder on each one, which of course Linux doesn't use, and running Windows Update or installing some new programs would often create annoying temporary directories with long and cryptic names in the root of the Linux disks. I know these are faults with Windows itself, and can probably be fixed, but it's still annoying.

So now, I just use Explore2FS. It's a bit clunky and annoying at times, and it only allows you to read Linux data, but I'd rather have a little inconvenience when copying Linux data, than risk losing it all together. Unfortunately, I think support for it is drying up.

As for NTFS-3G in Linux... well, it hasn't destroyed my Windows partitions yet, but I don't want to risk it and therefore try to avoid actually writing to them at all cost, and am considering passing the 'ro' option to the line in fstab to make sure.

I'd say if you need to be able to write to one partition from the other OS, I'd much rather use NTFS-3G from Linux than Ext2IFS/Ext2FSD from Windows. That's rather ironic, when you consider which is the free and open format, and which one's the reverse-engineered, proprietary one!

Solved the annoying "parameter is incorrect" error opening executables in Vista on the NTFS drive.

It's because of UAC (user access control.. i.e. the annoying popup permission boxes). Install TweakUAC - http://www.tweak-uac.com/home/ - and disable it completely (beware lack of security once you've done this).

Reboot and sorted :)