So, I've got a dual boot between windose and Debian, my computer locked up and I hard powered off. Now when I turn the computer back on it gets all the way up to loading the boot loader (grub I believe) and the system reboots. No error messages or anything, just reboots and starts counting memory again.

I believe all Hardware stuff is good to go becuase I'm using the computer right now wiht knoppix booted up. There's 4 partitions on the primary hard drive. hda1 is linux, 2 is linux swap, 3 windose, and 4 is a common storage area. I can access hda3 and 4, but I can't mount hda1 I get this error:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

So I try fsck to see if it will help out. I tried fsck /dev/hda1 and get this:
fsck 1.38-WIP (09-May-2005)
e2fsck 1.38-WIP (09-May-2005)
Couldn't find ext2 superblock, trying backup blocks...
fsck.ext2: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hda1

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

I thought this was an ext3, but I'm not sure. Regardless I thougth I'd try and add some optiosn to let fsck know it's ext3. But no matter what I try - -A or -t ext3 all I get in response is fsck 1.38-WIP (09-May-2005). I'm no expert, but I'm fairly used to passing options to commands, and I check the man page for this and as far as I can tell it should be working.

Next I tried e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/hda1, but I also get an error:
e2fsck 1.38-WIP (09-May-2005)
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hda1

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

I read that I should try -b 32768 instead, but that doesn't make any difference.

Next I rad to try ""mke2fs -S /dev/hdaXX", followed by an immediate "e2fsck -f /dev/hdaXX"" but this just seemed a little severe to me, and I wanted to ask if that's what I should be doing. I don't have any data I'm overly partial to on hda1, but hda3 and 4 and very dear to me. I can reinstall debian easly enough if need be, but I'd rather not. Thanks for any help and sigguestions.

You said that you would duel boot between Windows and Linux. Normally that means that /hda1 would be windows. Please double check whether you are correct on what you think your partitions are. You can use the "fdisk" command to list the partitions.

If you can get as far as a boot menu, since you use grub, you can boot from the grub shell. There are two handy features that help out when you can't boot normally. First, you can use auto-completion to locate the drive and partition containing the kernel and ramdisk. Second, using auto-completion, if you can locate the /boot/grub/menu.lst file, you can load it in and boot from a grub menu.

Having Windows in hda2, hda3 or hda4 are acceptable. I wouldn't worry about it at all.

It looks to me the hda1 filing system may be damaged and I would go for a reinstallation as it will not harm hda3 and hda4.

In fact since you are familar with Knoppix it may be better to put Knoppix into hda1. Afterall Knoppix is a modern variant of Debian as it uses a newer kernel. In you click to knoppix command mode these 2 lines will fire its installer up
Just keep an eye on the choice of the root partition and make absolutely sure it is hda1. Knoppix will pick hda2 swap and use it.

Thanks, I'll go ahead and re-install then. Any idea how things got messed up? I didn't think windose locking up would be able to effect my linux partition and the MBR.

Any OS locking up can mess up lots of things. While it is fun to argue that Windows is a worse offender, I doubt the reality of this. Remember that random forces of nature can flip bits in RAM and cause errors on hard drives.
A common urban legend which I have found consistently true is that it pays to re-install Windows at least once per year. I have no idea if this will be true for Linux as well.