Read linux ext2 and ext3 partitions under windows xp
The one most able to understand my reason for posting this would be Hans-Kun, since He was an indirect witness of the total havoc reigning on me PC saturday evening.
Windows, it seems, likes to adopt a microsoft-like attitude. what i mean is that it likes to assume it is THE one and only OS on any given pc, and therefore resets the mbr during installation. result? well, 40 GB worth content on a linux partition, rendered inaccessible since Grub doesnt even try to load.
After thinking about all possible cases (yup, even considered formatting everything and give 40 GB of music, anime, manga and pics…)
I suddenly had a spark and googled Read linux ext3 partitions under windows. and i found ext2ifs (Win xp/2003 only). What this goodie does?? well, it simply adds your linux partition as a read only drive in my computer, which you can access very much like if it was a cd. the good point? no risk of damaging your linux installation (read only) but you can still have access to all those files without rebooting! cool huh? that saved me some tears (but the backup costed me about 10 dvd-R 
) before i completely reformatted, installed windows, then installed ubuntu and phew, it worked 
(Note: I am ready for the total jump, its just that i need ms access for paper 4… )
EDIT:
The official home page
Thanks chris! now i can make one big 120GB linux partition and leave 20 GB ntfs to windows, no need for a shared fat32 partition…
read only is great 
Hey about the script problem you told me it was NSIS right? well redirection is complicated cause you need to know how thay particular app handles that particular directory (Variable path). maybe ill come check it this weekend
February 20th, 2007 at 5:09 am@ Aadil nice to know, thanks! *for once my unknowingness taught me 2 things! _
@ Hans okay, just tell me if you can do it
you could also try to do it as aadil mentions belosw.
well by the way, i misphrased up there, you need to configure the driver to start on booting, and restart after setting up,
February 20th, 2007 at 2:43 amwow! that’s kinda handy man. I should try this since I’m also in this situation with my Ubuntu distro being unreadable. Great for backing up things!
yeah perhaps M$ should start recognising other distributions’ partitions like others do for it. It’s kinda greedy. Do you think Vista got this kind of feature?
February 20th, 2007 at 12:37 amYou can re-install Grub even if it was damaged or overwritten after a subsequent Windows install. You will need a live CD, or your Linux distro rescue CD, for that.
February 19th, 2007 at 7:10 pm