ok.. now I feel like a boob...

but how the heck do I use findbad?

I tried making a bootdisk and throwing findbad on it.. but it
couldn't see my hard drive,,
perhaps the joe average win9x boot disk can't see ntfs drives?

I just also tried throwing it on a dos boot disk that could speak ntfs
that I snagged here, http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm
but that appears to have locked up...

not sure if I'm being a bone head, or if the drive is in so much
trouble that dos isn't playing with it?