I hate dual booting to pieces, moreso when two OSs are involved whose native filesystems can't be read by one or the other. My problem is that I need access to the ext3 partition my Slackware install is on from my Windows installation. Since ext3 isn't too far removed from ext2 and I only need read-only access will a tool for accessing an ext2 partition work with ext3 or do I need a whole new program and if so, does anyone have any recommendations?

I beleive the program you are looking for is called paragon ext2 anywhere. I have it on one of my machines and it works flawlessly. It treats your linux partitions just as if they were windows partitions.

I looked that up but I was kind of in the market for something a bit cheaper like say, free. Seeing as the ext2/3 code is only a simple trip to kernel.org away I fail to see how even read-only support can be so difficult to provide...

why not creating a small FAT32 partition to share files between the OSs? just make sure the size fits your needs.

and if you dont want to mess with your HD's partitions, try burning the files on an RW

just a thought... ;(

if u r looking for a free alternative, check out
uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm

its free and u can access ext3fs and ext2fs

u can try Explore2FS uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm

u get rw access to ext2fs and ext3fs