All but the last part is a preface to my question.

My IBM Thinkpad R40 has an NTFS drive and XP Pro. It boots up and works but I think the HDD is going slowly. Sometimes hard drive response is slow or files won't open or it makes too much noise.

I can't get to the HDD because the keyboard won't come out. So there is no physical solution like re-seating or replacing the HDD.

I can't load the Recovery Console because this computer is married to a Recovery CD (four of them, actually) not an XP installation CD.

What I want to do is force some means of locating bad sectors, recovering the data and quardening off the bad sectors like you used to be able to do with MS-DOS. While the Check Disk under C-drive, properties, tools goes through five steps (sorry I can't name them here), it doesn't ever appear to do a thorough search looking for bad sectors.

How can I do a thorough scan of the HDD for bad sectors, etc, as I describe?

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I'm not alone, read some of the customer feedback also.
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