HD problem: Can't Restore booting on Vista Business 64

[SOLVED] HD problem: Can't Restore booting on Vista Business 64

/begin history
I have a HP 6715S with a very low mileage vista business 64. It came to me with the drive split as follows:
C; 140G - Windows (bootable)
D: 10G - HP_Recovery (also bootable)
E: 7G - OS_TOOLS.

I got busy with resizing and ended up with
C: 35G (bootable windows version)
Extended partition: 105G for other Another Less Expensive Operating System (Mentioning no names)
D: 10G - HP_Recovery (Unchanged bootable primary partition). This I got instead of a windows cd.
E: 7G - OS_TOOLS.
and left vista there 'in case I ever needed it'. I happen now to need it, and can't get in because the partition table was wiped (Clever, huh?).
/end history.

I find I have a full backup on an external HD, but no way to restore it. (It always wanted to back up, so I pointed it at an ntfs slice of usb drive and told it to go ahead). I have had all NTFS partitions chkdsk'ed on a windows box, can mount them all, see files, but now the disk looks like this

C: Windows - not bootable primary 'bootable' partition
Rest is extended partition, with D: and E: at the end as before, but they are now secondary partitions. Booting, as always, consists in starting execution at the beginning of the drive, and this produces errors.

I cannot start windows at all, or even the recovery version. I can put this drive in an external usb holder and manipulate it under windows 7 or XP with administrator privileges. In each case it's calling in a favour and asking people to have a go. I can also read/write NTFS from the Other Operating System. This is a low mileage licensed windows install with no SP or conceivably SP1.
I seem to be caught in an M$ Catch-22. Any ideas?

Run Startup Repair from the installation DVD at least 3 times: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/91467-startup-repair.html

If this doesn't work, then we'll have to start working with bootrec commands (fixboot, fixmbr, etc): How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows

[SOLVED] Re: HD problem: Can't Restore booting on Vista Business 64

usasma said:

Run Startup Repair from the installation DVD at least 3 times: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/91467-startup-repair.html

Click to expand...

Thanks for this. I tried it, and that rescue disk is good, but didn't sort me out. I think the trouble lay in different interpretations of the early part of the drive( after all the partitions were lost & restored). So I backed up linux (May I say that here?), and gave it the nod to restore from a backup, which I had. It threatened me with formats, and nasty stuff, and I swallowed hard, checked the box and said 'fine'

What came out was a perfect original copy of windows. It restored the disks partition table, so my D: & E: are now back to primary partitions, and all the partitions are renumbered as was. I( had to figure out how to turn off all the crap in vista all over again, but I'm going to have to make friends with that, because they are throwing software package after software package at me in College and I'll be able to install local copies.

As usual, I'm very grateful for the very high quality help.