Thanx for the information saikee.
I was hoping that your suggestion was my last resort.
The longer story is that I'm trying to set-up a multiboot system with about 40 partitions.
Having minimal success using gparted and the limitations of some of the gnome releases not wanting to handle more than 16 (I think) partitions.
Been at it for too long to remember the exact number now.
Had success with mrrangerman43's provided information regarding using reiserfsck utilities and a live Debian distro.
Not to be complaining about free Linux but sure wish there were more consistancies with the utilities and distros.
Probably just better off to start from scratch and flatten the HD.
Thank you again for the replies!
ErikTheRed