After trying to get this drive working with the Ultimate Boot CD, I decided to buy a new hard drive (as mentioned in my other thread on Vista partition size limits). I ultimately decided to make it my master drive and installed Vista and installed all my software. I copied all the personal files from the unbootable old Master drive to the new drive.
As I mentioned before, when I tried to install Vista on the old master drive, it wouldn't complete. One of the things I install on all my Vista drives is Norton System Works from Norton System Works Premier which is anti-virus plus the System Works. Since I switched to Norton 360, I only install the Norton System Works. One of the things I noticed on one of the discs is that it said it could be used as a bootable system recovery disc. So, I booted from it. One of the tools it has is Checkdisc. So I ran it. While it was running, I noticed that it was checking C:\Windows.old. Apparently, when I tried to install Vista earlier, it had created that folder. So, using my new drive to edit the old drive, I moved all the Windows folder and other folders back to the C: drive.
When I tried to boot the old drive, it blue screened. It provided the error codes and I found recovery solutions but one assumed I could boot to Safe Mode, which I couldn't, and the other required Windows to be running (kinda stupid). So, I tried reinstalling Vista. It would get all the way to Completing Installation and then blue screen as before. I did this about four times with the same result. One of the things I noticed in the message is that it talked about installing new software or hardware could cause that problem. I got to thinking about it and, in the middle of this whole mess, I had installed a new sound card and blu-ray drive. I disconnected both and tried the Vista installation again. It worked! So now I have two working discs. I haven't even started on the one that got me into this. That's next.
I do have a question.
Even though my new drive has never seen the old slave drive that I'll be working on next, System Works says that the MBR is corrupt because Disc 2 is corrupt and needs to be formatted. Is that information contained in the CMOS? If so, how can I fix it?