I am using Knoppix to try to fix my system.

Basically at boot one of my ext3 filesystems that hasnt been checked by fsck for some time is force checked. Unfortunately absolutely no messages are sent to the consol. I have no idea whether or not the system is progressing through the check or not. So I am trying to use Knoppix to fix the problem.

In Knoppix I do get messages back from e2fsck telling me that nodes are being checked etc. I then get messages about inodes having problems. I accept the values of force rewrite, but then nothing happens!

Is there anything else I can try?

I hope that this doesn't have something to do with my harddisks being physically damaged.

So do I - having experienced similar not too long ago, I suggest you try and get all the data off to another disk.
Pronto.

Haven't tried it, but dd_rescue would be worth investigating, it's on sourceforge.