Since my Windows-system (the system disk) crashed, I had no Windows anymore on my PC. After installing Ubuntu, I could mount my NTFS-partitions, but only in read-only mode. Trying to mount them in read-write mode resulted in errors, because “the NTFS logfile is unclean”. There are tools for Linux that can set a flag in the NTFS-partitions, that will be recognized by Windows so that it will perform a chkdsk on that disk on the next reboot. The only problem was: I have no Windows anymore.
> Enter VMWare Server.
I installed VMWare Server, the free edition that can be downloaded from VMWare’s site (an “apt-get install xinetd -y” could be necessary). Since I own a legal Windows XP Pro copy, I installed that into a VMWare guest-OS, and started it. Worked great. Powerdown, modify the VMWare configuration to include the physical disks (for advanced users only) that contained the NTFS-partitions. Restart the guest-OS again, and voila, explorable extra disks. Shutdown Windows properly and the partitions are once again in a clean state. Mounting them in Ubuntu is now a piece of cake.
VMWare is an invaluable piece of software. I own a legal (prehistoric!) “Workstation 3.0” that I used on my laptop to go to clients and being able to work on my machine with their Windows. Great software!