Vista on Dell Laptop

Hello all, I just acronis'ed (partition resized) Vista x64 from the whole hard drive 451 to 150gb and to make space for windows 7 installation on the free 300gb. During the resize the laptop went to sleep so I had to reboot --- but after rebooting, I could not create a partition because it reported as no space available. Somehow ? I got out of that and managed to resize again, this time successfully (so I thought) to 150gb. Installed Win7 successfully on the 300gb partition but now unable to boot back to Vista although the bootup gives both options win7 and vista. Ran EBCD and set up windows 7 boot with vista as second choice. Still no luck - Vista will not come up - even in safe mode - it just sits there with a black screen and the arrow cursor.

Tried the original install disk and did repair several times from the CD on vista partition but still did not start - I then went to command and ran bootrec.exe /fixmbr etc... it said successful but still no luck in vista boot. The 150gb partition seems to be intact there are program files and program files (x86) folders with all the installed stuff on it. Anyway I moved all what could be moved into the win7 partition in preparation for the worst!! (a fresh vista re-install). Is this my only solution now ??

Laptop is a Dell and has data backup - laptop still under warranty. If I re-install Vista I can re-install all the programs but how can I get back the Dell software for the online backup facilities ?
I notice there is a fat16 folder which has dell stuff in it but don't know how to recover.

hello
you can try to factory settings IF the recovery partition is still intact..... then start over if you want.... Laptop Recovery Instructions - Tech Support Forum

PS: did you look in disk management to see if both partitions are marked as active?
I don't know how to get there in win7.

GOOD LUCK !!