Fun fact of the day: exFAT driver from Vista runs under XP and 2003

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Monday, April 24. 2006

Fun fact of the day: exFAT driver from Vista runs under XP and 2003

I'm not sure if it is supposed to or not, but it looks like you can force install the exFAT driver into Windows XP and 2003 installations. I'm not sure if this will work with newer Vista builds, but for testing out removable media between Vista and XP boxes, it can be a handy trick.

I'm sure it is extremely unsupported but I'm not keeping any mission critical data on any exFAT partitions yet anyway.

For the curious, exFAT is the new way to get around the 32GB FAT32 limitation in Windows (2TB in theory), which is not backwards compatible with FAT32, but is aimed to be simple enough to put onto embedded devices, cameras, etc.

Posted by Aaron Tiensivu in Vista at 17:21 | Comments (11) | Trackbacks (0)

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Can you give details where to get that driver, and how to install it? Please?

#1 phoo on 2007-12-04 04:51 (Reply)

Can you please guide me for installing exFAT driver on win2k3?

#2 AmitL on 2007-12-14 05:37 (Reply)

Hi, Can u please guide me for how to force install exFAT on win2k3 and where could i find this driver? Thanks in anticipation.

#3 JamesA on 2007-12-14 06:54 (Reply)

confirmed. you need the to systemfiles uexfat.dll and exfat.sys form a vista sp1 installation. you also have to make a registry entry.

#4 eog on 2008-03-15 19:06 (Reply)

here the try of a guide:
1. get uexfat.dll and exfat.sys form a vista sp1 32-bit installation.
2. put exfat.sys to windows\system32\drivers and uexfat.dll to windows\system32
3. open notepad. paste the following (between --beginn-- and --end --to notepad.
--beginn--
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\exfat]
"Description"="exFAT File System Driver"
"DisplayName"="exFAT File System Driver"
"ErrorControl"=dword:00000001
"Group"="Boot File System"
"Start"=dword:00000002
"Type"=dword:00000002

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Eventlog\System\exfat]
"EventMessageFile"=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,\
00,6f,00,74,00,25,00,5c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,\
5c,00,49,00,6f,00,4c,00,6f,00,67,00,4d,00,73,00,67,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,\
00,00,00
"TypesSupported"=dword:00000007
--end--
4. save the file as exfatXP.reg
5. doubleclick it and reboot. now you should have access to your exfat partition on your vista installation.

!!!Warning!!!
Exfat is not open source. so it´s only supported by Microsoft. you will not have access to a exfat partition with other operating systems like linux and OS X.
So if you want to use it as a transfer filesystem it will not work. you have to use fat32. if you have a problem with creating a fat32 partition bigger than 32 GB you can use a other OS like Linux or OS X. I formated my usb harddrive with OS X (one partition of 460 GB). The other limitations of fat32 are still there (no files bigger than 4 GB, etc)

#5 eog on 2008-03-15 19:19 (Reply)

this process does not work man

#5.1 sanchit (Homepage) on 2008-09-03 12:16 (Reply)

I got it to work with limited success. Not perfect by any means. Worked great on the first XP box I tried, but the second one wouldn't take.

#5.1.1 Dude on 2008-12-03 16:04 (Reply)

5. ... should have access to your exfat partition on your WINDOWS XP INSTALLATION.

#6 eog on 2008-03-15 19:23 (Reply)

see:
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm
for a FAT32 formatting tool that doesn't have the size limitation

#7 George Birbilis (Homepage) on 2008-10-15 12:22 (Reply)

This driver really works...
Now I have this driver on my 1GB pendrive with NTFS and exFAT on my 16GB SDHC card... And now I'm able to use that card even if some particular PC has XP... Cool...

Why doesn't Microsoft make an update for XP?.. Bugs maybe?..

#8 Eliot the Cougar (Homepage) on 2008-12-10 07:08 (Reply)

WinXP users can now ditch the exFAT Vista driver. Microsoft has now posted the KB955704 update that adds full exFAT support for Windows XP SP2/SP3. Get the patch here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955704

#9 EP on 2009-02-05 11:13 (Reply)

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