Spotlight problem after Tiger to Leopard Upgrade

Since I upgraded my Macbook Pro 15" from Tiger to Leopard, Spotlight never worked. Initially I didn't mind too much but now I want to get it work.
I tried all suggestions I found in this forum (see list below) to no avail.
It seems Mac OS cannot index the system disk.
Any Terminal command like mdutil or mdimport have no effect and return no info. As a check, I ran the same utilities on my iMac (same Leopard version, but native) and they do in fact work as expected, as well as Spotlight. Another example: mdfind works on my iMac but return nothing on my MBP.
If I try the regular way, when I write my search string in the Spotlight window I just get nothing on my MBP.
I tried the OnyX features for Spotlight:
- Maintenance/Rebuild/Spotlight Index seems to do something, but in fact it does nothing useful
- Parameters/Spotlight/Options: Enable Indexing the Startup-Disk makes an attempt to enable it and switches immediately back to disabled. No way to keep the option checked. Also removed the Font cache from OnyX as suggested in some post - null.
Some attempts I made:
- used Disk Utility to check the disk (no repair needed)
- used Disk Utility to repair permissions: there are many that are always repaired... this makes me feel the problem might in fact be in the permission area. But after many repair the result is always null.
- added the start-up disk to the Privacy area in Spotlight Prefs, and later on removed - null
- trashed com.apple.spotlight.plist pref user prefs - a new one was created but no effect
- removed /.Spotlight-V100 from terminal - a new one was created but no effect
- used mdutil -E and -i on and off - I always get the message "/: Indexing and searching disabled"
- mdimport -L or -A or -X return nothing (on my iMac they return the list of plugins, schema etc.)
- rebooted many times also in safe mode - null
- the problem exists also for the other user on the same MBP
- tried OnyX as described above.
No effect!!
Now my question is: what can I try next ?
I'm sure there is some parameter somewhere (some .plist ?) that can re-enable Spotlight. But which one and where ?
Thanks in advance
Piero

Take a look at Spotless
http://www.fixamac.net/software/spot2/index.php
It deals mainly with Spotlight indexes, but it also contains some diagnostics - its description includes the following:
Spotless will automatically find and delete the "mds-crash-state" file from selected volumes. The file may be created if the Metadata Server crashed or was unexpectedly closed during the indexing process. The presence of this file can prevent Spotlight from indexing the volume in the future.
Spotless allows you to see exact size of the index directory on each volume.
Spotless also includes an on/off switch for Spotlight.
------------------

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