On Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:18:40 GMT, Franklin wrote:

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/morgan.tate/

Interesting article.
It's an IBM laptop so it has a Hitachi 2.5" hard disk drive in it, not an
IBM desktop hard drive.
But, in the end, if I don't resurrect the disk by less drastic means, it
will be time to go in for the kill and rip the innards out and put them in
another drive. But that's for later.

For now, I found the IBM Thinkpad recovery disks and have re-instaleld the
operating system - having given up on the buggy Windows Activation (it
should at least have given me the chance to type SOMETHING in - and not
just hang like that).

The good news is the computer is back up - the bad news is I have to
install all the programs all over again, like WinXP SP2 and all the
updates. For example, I have to dig up how to load Wireless Zero
Configuration stuff so that WPA2-Personal works again (it's not even an
option in SP2 - I remember digging that one up on google so I'll dig it
up).

If you know of better freeware that can diagnose this hard drive, let me
know.