Windows 7 and HFS+ (Mac OS X extended File System)

For anyone who may have stumbled upon this: I solved this and directions for accessing HFS+ partitions using MacDrive are posted at the bottom of the next post.

I'm not quite sure where to put this, so please do move it to a more appropriate forum, mods.

I've been using OS X for the last 6 months, and as such I've been using hard drives formatted as HFS+.
Unfortunately, Windows hasn't ever had native HFS+ support and that hasn't changed in Win7.

For Vista and XP there are programs which allow you to access HFS+ partitions and drives as though they were native Windows FAT or NTFS drives. Unfortunately, MacDrive doesn't seem to work for Win7, and I'd really like integrated access as I could have in Vista and XP.

Yes, HFSExplorer works and I can extract files, but all of my music, movies, documents, etc. are on the HFS+ partitions and I would like native access so I can include them in libraries.
I could also format one partition as FAT32 or NTFS and use that as a bridge between the two OSes, but this isn't optimal and I'd rather not as it'd be a fuss transferring files over during the conversion.

tl;dr: Win7 HFS+ halp?

Little update...
Plugged in my iPod (Classic 6G) just now, which I forgot is formatted as HFS+ and has the Mac version of the firmware on it.
Lo and behold, I can access it and see files inside, and I think it's MacDrive which is enabling me to do so (see screenshot attached -- 'MacDrive' tab in Properties).

So this makes me think MacDrive can read the drives, it's just not mounting them or something along those lines. Anyone know a bit more about Windows' attitudes to drives know anything which might help?

I'm gonna go look around at drive mounting in Windows, perhaps I can solve this myself.

EDIT: Ok, first of all, tried updating MacDrive from 7.0.10 or whatever to 7.0.26 or so. Broke MacDrive. Reinstalled original.
Found a post on another Win7 forum about someone having success with MacDrive by simply assigning a drive letter (in Paragon). So I tried that, but Paragon doesn't seem to want to assign a letter to it. Every time I try and apply, then close the window, it goes back to having no letter. To make things worse, it doesn't recognise it's not actually being used, so once I use a letter, it isn't available again. I've now run out of letters (I was curious as to what would happen if I used them all up. The list is empty. How boring), but Explorer shows all the free drive letters just as it should do.
I'll try PMing/emailing the guy who posted on the other forum.

EDIT2: Ok, done. SOLVED.
With a bit of help from a post on the forums over at MacRumours, I downloaded a program which is actually meant to help managing Ext2 partitions, but it works great for HFSJ too.
1. Download & Install 'Ext2fsd 0.42'
2. Assign drive letters.
3. Reboot.
Works perfectly and better than most other methods I found, as it's a permanant solution -- that is, you don't need to reassign letters on every boot.

Another final note: MacDrive 7.2.25 works fine on build 7100. It's just 7.2.26 which won't start.

I think you are going about this the wrong way. Rather than share HFS+, the Mac will let you share your files so they will appear as a Windows file share. In System Preferences, go to Sharing, then check Windows Sharing. The Mac uses Samba (SMB), you can even join your Windows Workgroup.

Stay away from the new Windows 7 HomeGroup, that only works with Windows 7.

I'm running Windows on the SAME computer which has the HD with the HFS+ Partitions on it...
I don't see how OS X can share the drives as samba shares if it's not even turned on. Unless I'm missing something.
Either way, I don't want them as network shares, I want them as regular drives, and to treat them as regular drives.

I'm using Parallels to run XP on an iMac with Windows file sharing turned on. In XP I map a network drive so I see the Mac as my Q: drive. Works pretty good.

Yeah, that'll work great for VMs but I'm running Seven as a separate OS.
At the minute I can't get into my OS X install, after [what I suspect to be Paragon's Partition crap] broke my MBR and made the OS X drives unrecognisable to even the OS X install DVD. Weird tihng is I can access the drive's partitions from Seven via MacDrive. So I'm backing up from that and gonna format. :\

Sorry, I didn't realize you were running Boot Camp. It hadn't dawned on me before, but that's a disadvantage.

And I'm really sorry about your loss. Good luck with the reload.