*UPDATE*

Burned a copy of Hirens boot CD (http://www.hirensbootcd.net), booted up in "Mini XP" mode, opened up a partition manager, and strangely found my NTFS partition completely intact, with no bad sectors on the drive at all ?? Still scratching my head over that one. Anyway, I toggled the partition as active, rebooted and *VOILA*, mbr restored, and it's alive.. Thank you all so much for the help, Nihil for the incoming snail mail, and HYBR|D for the Hiren's boot CD suggestion.