There are two problems related to the Linux / Ubuntu Drive partitions :

1. Windows Does Not Read Linux / Ubuntu Drive Partitions which are EXT2 or EXT3 Partitions
2. Pen Drives Formatted On Linux As EXT Are Not Readable By Windows

There problems are not because of the limitation of Linux or Windows operating system, these problems arise because Windows and Linux work on different file systems. One advantage that Linux has is that it can read windows drive partitions as it recognizes the Windows File Systems, but vice-e-versa is not true. Windows OS does not have the feature or in-built support to read Linux partitions.

I this article I will share some methods to read Linux partitions from Inside Windows OS. These methods allow you to access, read and write files to and from EXT2 and EXT3 Partitions from inside Windows Operating System.

Fix:

There are two type of solutions to help you read EXT2 / EXT3 file system which is used by Linux / Ubuntu. First type are the File system drivers which are installed in Windows and allows it to read Linux / Ubuntu partitions just like windows partitions. Second type are the tools which allow to read and write EXT2 / EXT3 partitions from within windows as stand-alone explorer type utilities.

I tested four tools, two of them are Windows File System drivers to enable EXT2 / EXT3 File Read Write and other two are standalone utilities. I will review them one by one with features, merits and demerits.

EXT2 Installable File System Windows Drivers

EXT2 IFS Drivers are free for download and support reading and writing of EXT2 Partitions inside windows and are compatible with up to Windows Vista as of now. You can simply download and install the drivers in Windows, restart your computer and it will start reading Linux Ubuntu Partitions in Windows Explorer.

Some of the useful features include:

• Supports all operations you would expect: Reading and writing files, listing directories, creating, renaming, moving and deleting files or directories, querying and modifying the volume’s label.
• UTF-8 encoding.
• Files larger than 2 GBytes. (Please read the FAQ section, too.)
• Supports hash indexed (htree) directories (utilizes the so-called dir_index feature of Ext3).
• Full plug-n-play functionality. When a drive is removed, the corresponding drive letter is deleted.
• Supports use of the Windows mountvol utility to create or delete drive letters for Ext2 volumes (except on Windows NT 4.0). This is useful for scripts. (Please read the FAQ section, too.)
• A global read-only option is provided.
• File names that start with a dot "." character are treated as hidden.

The only demerit i find in these drivers is that it does not support Windows 7 as of now. Hope they will soon come up with Windows 7 compatible version of Drivers.

Download EXT2 IFS Drivers

EXT2 FSD Windows Drivers

EXT2 FSD are essentially similar as the EXT2 IFS with added support for EXT3 partition along with EXT2 partitions support.  Features of EXT2 FSD are :

• ext2/ext3 volume reading and writing
• ext3 journal replay when mounting
• various codepage: utf8, cp936, cp950
• mount point automatic assignment
• large inode size: 128, 256,
• large file size bigger than 4G
• Compatible OS: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows server 2008 (i386/amd64)

Again the limitation I find is missing support for Windows 7, you can download and install this driver from the link below.

Download EXT2 FSD Drivers

Virtual Volumes Tool For EXT Partitions

Virtual Volumes tool is tool which will detect, read and write the EXT partitions within Windows. This tool works with Windows 7 as well. So if you have Windows 7 Installed and can’t use the above drivers, you can use this tool.

Download Virtual Volumes Tool For Windows

DiskInternals Linux Reader For Windows

This is another freeware tool by DiskInternals which works properly with Windows 7 and it can read and write files on EXT2 and EXT3 partitions within Windows OS.

The futures of this tool include:

• Easy explorer look like interface.
• Works under Microsoft® Windows® 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 Server, Vista.
• Supported file systems: Ext2, Ext3.
• Supported files of any size.
• Recovered files can be saved on any (including network) disks visible to the host operating system.

Download DiskInternals Linux Reader

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Ubuntu is a wonderful variant of Linux. Ubuntu is very easy to Install using Wubi inside Windows. See out tutorial : Install Ubuntu Inside Windows Using Wubi

But ubuntu has its own problems when it comes to graphics and sound drivers on some specific laptops. My laptop HP DV4 is one of those laptops which have problems of drivers. Recently I wrote the solution for sound driver problem in this tutorial : No Sound In Ubuntu On HP Laptop

In this article I will tell you how to get the best visual and graphic effects from Ubuntu by Installing the required graphic drivers.

Fix:

First of all you must know what type of graphics card is present in your laptop. Check your laptop model details on the laptop box or Internet to know the details.

If everything goes as Ubuntu is designed, it will automatically detect and select the graphics driver from Ubuntu repositories.  Follow the below steps to Install the graphics drivers:

Automatic Method To Install Nvidia Drivers

Go to System > Administration > Hardware Drivers
this will automatically search for the hardware for which drivers are needed. It will also give you the option to Activate the driver. Once you activate it, it will download and Install the drivers needed for the graphics card. If this succeeds in your case, just read and follow the last step in the list of Manual Method below and ignore rest of the steps.

Manual Method To Install Nvidia Drivers

In case the automatic install does not work as it did not work in my case, It will get stuck somewhere in downloading and will probably remain stuck for a few minutes and then it fail. you need to manually download and install the drivers in the command line recovery mode. For this, follow the steps below:

1. Download and save the graphics driver on you ubuntu Desktop folder from Nvidia website : http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
It will be a file with .run extensions. In my case, the file name was "NVIDIA-Linux-x86-185.18.36-pkg1.run"

2 Now Right Clik on the file and Click Properties, after this click on permission tab and check the checkbox which says "EXECUTE". This is very important because the file must be made executable to install the drivers.

3. Start the ubuntu, while booting, you will see a screen which says " Press Esc for Menu" This screen will come only for 3 or 5 seconds, so be careful and quick and press the Esc key.

4. This will show the ubuntu boot options, choose the ubuntu recover mode.

5. This will take you to a menu which will give you many options, choose the options which says " Start at Shell Prompt"

6. This will open a text login screen, at this screen put your username and password to login into the shell prompt session.

7. Now change the directory to the desktop by typing the following with your <username> in the below line

cd /home/<username>/Desktop

8. This will change the directory to the Desktop folder where you saved the downloaded .run in above steps. At this prompt, type the foloowing command to Install the driver from the run file. e.g if the run file’s complete filename is <filename>, replace it with the below command

sudo ./<filename>

9. This will give you a warning that you are running at Init level 1, and some other warnings etc. Agree to all those warnings and proceed to Installation. At the end of the installation, you will see a success message. After this, type  "exit" and press enter.

10. Restart the Ubuntu, the drivers are now Installed.

11. To Enhance Graphics Effects, right click on the "Change Desktop Background". On the window that opens, click on "Visual Effects" tab, here you can select the "Normal" or "Extra" effects to enhance the graphics and enjoy the wonderful graphics of Ubuntu.

Please leave your suggestions and comments below.

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[SOLVED] Manually Download And Install Nvidia Graphics Drivers In Ubuntu | Get Best Graphic Effects In Ubuntu By Installing Graphics Drivers is a post from TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles

I have always loved to experiment with and use open source OS like Linux and Ubuntu. Recently I have installed the Ubuntu 9.0.4 on my HP DV4 laptop. You can do it using Wubi, see this tutorial for the same : Install Ububtu Inside Windows Without Formatting Hard-disk

After Installing Ubuntu, the sound did not work on my Laptop, so I searched for some Ubuntu forums and found out the solution for my HP laptop. If you also have a HP laptop or desktop PC, this solution may Fix your problem also.

Fix:

There is a file named “alsa-base” which needs to be modified and placed at proper location for the Sound to work on Ubuntu. Follow the below steps to make sound work on your HP laptop:

1. Go to Accessories > Terminal

2. On terminal Windows type the following without the quotes

“gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base”

3. Step 2 will open a file for editing. At the end of this file, type the following line without quotes:

“options snd-hda-intel enable_msi=1”

4. Restart your HP laptop running Ubuntu, if you are lucky like me, you can now hear the sounds on Ubuntu properly.

Hope you fund this fix easy to follow. Credit [Ubuntu Forums]

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[Solved] No Sound In Ubuntu On HP Laptop | Sound Not Working On Ubuntu On HP DV4 Laptop is a post from TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles

Have you installed Windows and Ubuntu in dual boot? If yes, you might have installed Windows First and the Ubuntu, which is a good way of doing it.

In case you have already Installed Windows on your computer, then you have another good options to install Ubuntu inside windows without formatting hard disk using Wubi Installer.

But the problem is when you have Ubuntu installed already and then you install Windows on it. On installing Windows on top of Ubuntu, Windows removes the ubuntu boot-loader called grub and replaces it with windows boot loader. In this case, you will not be able to boot into Ubuntu.

To fix this issue, we will tell you how to install the ubuntu boot-loader called grub on top of windows boot-loader so that you can boot into windows or ubuntu whenever you like.

Fix:

For this you will need a Ubuntu live CD. Download the ubuntu live CD image from here and burn the CD. You can also order the ubuntu CDs by mail for free, but it will take a few weeks.

Follow the below steps :

1. Once you have the ununtu live CD ready, boot your computer with this CD.

2. On first menu, select the language > English.

3. Select the option called “Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer”. This will launch ubuntu in live mode.

4. Once it loads the Ubuntu desktop, go to Menu > Accessories > Terrminal. This will open a prompt window.

5. On this prompt window, type command “sudo grub” without the quotes and press enter key. This will show a grub prompt.

6. On grub prompt type “find  /boot/grub/stage1” without quotes and press enter key. This will show a output like this one “(hd1,4)” or something like that, note down the output you see on a piece of paper, its very important that u note it correctly else it will mess up the next steps. Lets assume you get something like “(hdx,y)”, where x is hard disk number and y is partition number which varied from computer to computer.

7. Now type “root (hdx,y)” without quotes and press enter.

8. Now type “setup (hdx)” without quotes and press enter.

9. After some processing you will see a message which says “Done”. After this, simply type “quit” and press enter.

10. Turn off the Ubuntu live session, remove the CD from CD tray, and your grub will be back. Now you can Run Windows Or Linux from the boot options.

Hope you find it useful and simple.

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Recently we got a mail from one of readers who is not able to boot from Linux on his computer after he had installed Windows XP.There was Linux already installed on his computer.

All this has actually occurred because of wrong order of install of these operating system.

Fix:

It is always desired that you install windows before you install Linux as the installation other way round would result in corrupted boot-loader and you will not get the option to boot from Linux.

Due to wrong sequence of installation of windows over a Linux system, windows erases the existing boot-loader from boot sector of the hard disk. It overwrites existing boot sector with the windows boot-loader (NTLDR).

But don’t worry as you can simply fix this using a Linux bootable CD /DVD.

Boot the computer with the Linux bootable CD / DVD.

1. At the boot prompt, type ‘linux rescue‘ (without quotes) and hit enter.
2. Continue with the default options through the prompts.
3. When you get to a bash prompt, type ‘chroot /mnt/sysimage’ (I think that’s the path).
4. Then, type ‘/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda’ (assuming, hda is your system drive).

5. Eject the cd /dvd and reboot your computer ,you will see the default grub bootloader which allows you to boot both with windows and Linux

Hope this info fixes up the trouble.

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Use Windows and Linux together on the same computer is a post from TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles