If somebody else would have asked me how to solve such a problem I would have recommended exactly this! But I was somehow totally focused on this chkdsk problem. Getting old...

>>trying to run repairs from  the "new" Windows running on the good hard drive?)

I cannot believe I didn't come up with this idea myself! I have several identical systems and I certainly will try adding this drive to one of the other systems in order to run chkdsk on it!

Thanks!

ok, same here a long time ago, somebody smart told me its is just easier to take a failing hard drive out, and look at it on a correctly functioning system (if possible).

if you can, post progress, etc. as you go along.

re: "freeze, bump, drop"

just moving the drive around may have bumped something loose, and now it works?

otherwise: cables on the original machine the drive was running in might be bad, or need to be reseated in their sockets? or, something is wrong with the other hardware in that machine?

>>fwiw ~ while googling, I noticed that Vista has something called "WinRE"

I don't like Vista, never needed Vista and I'm VERY skeptical towards W7 because it looks just like an even more dummyfied version of the same. The only working version of Windows is still XP and so far I haven't found anything NOT working on XP, but LOTS of trouble with Vista. Just for the sake of quetionable look improvements and reduced insights into what's going on I'm not going to swap. I was one of the testers for XP and I'm just very comfortable with it.  

When I'm working on a PC, I'm not interested in the OS but in the apps it can run. I also have a few Apples for their "Logic" Recording Software (I have used it since it was first released on ATARI computers) but I would throw them out as soon as Logic runs on a PC again. I have never understood thoise Apple fans. And I'm all against Microsoft trying to imitate Apple.

Progress:

Disk is accesible in the other system, recovered all the important stuff. Successfully scheduled Chkdsk upon restart, but now for a surprise: NO ERRORS!

How is that possible? Actually, I ran Chkdsk on this drive before, when it was still working and it also didn't report any errors. But I didn't run the bad sector check. This is very strange. Must be some head adjustment problem.

re: "getting old"

"I resemble that remark." :)

I do the same thing ("get OCD") about something wrong with technology, have to remember to step back and think about the "big picture".

fwiw ~ while googling, I noticed that Vista has something called "WinRE" - Windows Recovery Environment (bootable), which looks really cool at first glance. Since I just started running Win7 RC 64 on my home computer (dual boot), I'm going to play around with WinRE. if it is also available for Win7.

("read the fine manual")

Unfortunately, the disk remains unbootable and also showed erors accessing certain directories. It did backup all the important stuff but froze at reading certain directories.

This problem began weeks ago when the system froze. I looked in the event log and found an NV error, contacted NVIDIA, they recommended downloading the latest driver as expected. The system ran fine for weeks, then it froze again. I exchanged the memory, tested all components including the drives without errors.

Well, I got an RMA Number from Seagate/Maxtor, so I'll get to spend another several days to re-configure my system.

Thanks for your concern,
Mike

This is why RAID exists (drive mirrors).

And "automatic" backup systems.

And drive imaging.

And backup services on the internet (Dell sells one). etc.

At work, I never deploy a PC for a manager/expert unless it has mirrored disks. Say one of them is working late on a big proposal due the next morning, and their hard drive fails. They are not going to be happy hearing that it will take hours/days to rebuild with a new (replacement) hard drive. With RAID (mirror), the bad drive gets pulled/replaced, and the mirror automatically rebuilds in the background.

Win XP: well, I was happiest when running Wordperfect5.1 in DOS and Oracle6 on Netware2. The good old days.

Yes, Win7 is Vista-II (absent the stupid OS name). It does have some compelling features/capabilities, at least in a business setting, including "better security". If you read Russinovich http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/ (or listen to http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/Mark+Russinovich/ ) on Win7 kernel improvements, Win7 should have *much* greater stability under heavy multi-tasking/multi-process loads (especially on multi-core CPUs). I'll be playing around with Virtual PC (XP mode) in Win7 on my home Optiplex 755, I hope the processor supports the needed virtualization features. (I know, "read the fine manual"))

Ok, for anyone that can somehow qualify as being in an enterprise environment, the old Winternals repair suite (made famous when Best Buy tried to steal it from Russinovich before Winternals/SysInternals was bought by Microsoft) is now called MDOP/DaRT.

ERD Commander, etc.

NOTE: This is not very useful to retail consumers, or anyone looking for a "free" set of recovery/repair tools., except in the sense that if you are looking to take you PC to a repair shop, you might want to task if they use MDOP/DaRT (or the old Winternals suite?).

Also: the links to the trial version at the below web page no longer work.

http://kurtsh.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!DA410C7F7E038D!1876.entry

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Marketing brochure:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/0/a/a0a79fbb-f404-41cc-b6d7-994d27983c84/datasheet-drt.xps

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Demo video:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/enterprise/videos/drt.asx