Solved: NTFS driver problem

[Webt]

I've just read this: http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,113474.0.html
and I'm in the same boat, but can't solve it, unlike the clever Mr Scotchman. My external disk drive is now as useful as a chocolate teapot. Messages as follows:
Unable to mount the volume 'FreeAgent Drive'.
Details
Cannot get volume.fstype.alternative

Ive tried to uninstall, and reinstall, various ntfs bits and pieces in Synaptic.
I currently have libntfs10; ntfs-3g; ntfs-3g-devel; and ntfs-config installed.
ntfsprogs and ntfsprogs-gnomevfs are present but not installed.
The FreeAgent drive remains stubbornly unusable and unreadable. A random usb pendrive lying around which I stuck in seems to work ok. I'm using PASS; and I'm still a gnome, if that's any help. Any bright ideas, please, anyone?

[Just17]

The fix he provided was to Completely Remove the installed related packages and then install them again.

It might be useful to do a reboot before reinstalling, to ensure there is nothing hanging about which might affect things.

[Webt]

Bumping this as still not solved. What I have done so far:
Completely removed the installed related packages and then installed them again. Rebooted before and after reinstalling. No joy.
Went into configure - local disks - manage disk partitions - sdb - created /media/FreeAgent_Drive, all to no avail.
So, I thought, is it the drive itself? Connected it to my partner's pc (she has to have windoze as she works for the NHS and they don't recognise linux as an os!). Lo and behold, no problems, 95Gb of photos / documents etc all visible and readable. Thank heavens for Mr Gates' chief invention, I briefly thought.
So, any ideas? Other internet searches have revealed many other people with problems relating to ntfs-3g. Is it a gnome thing? Please, any more assistance / ideas gratefully received.
EDIT: Well now something odd has occurred. I have the drive back, but not the desktop shortcuts / background. What I did: went back into configure - local disks - manage disk partitions - sdb, the drive was there but unmounted; mounted it, it's back. Don't know if it'll be there when I next switch off and back on again ... will report back, if anyone reading this is interested. btw, I tried to load from the NLUUG repository (as Scotchman did) but got a 404 not found.
If it all works I'll mark this as solved, sometime in the near future. Off to lunch now ...

[Just17]

Had that drive been plugged into a Win PC prior to its failing to show in Linux?

I have seen it reported that failure to safely remove a drive in Windows can leave it in a state that Linux wil not like at all, and the solution is to plug it into Win again and this time to safely remove it.

As I don't use Win here I have no personal experience of this.

[Webt]

Solved - just turned pc back on, drive mounted and available; old shortcut links not working but new ones I've just made do. Background picture back as well. Not sure how I did it but I did! As for plugging the drive in to win etc, it had worked ok until a couple of days ago; I tested it this morning on a win pc, and unplugged it correctly as per win's version of "... may now be safely unplugged"; so that wouldn't have caused the first problem. Sorted now; happy bunny.