Lost my master boot record in Vista

I'm running a Dell Vostro 1500 with Vista Business, original spec except I expanded the RAM to 4GB.

Left running overnight, it was frozen when I got up, I restarted it, it commenced a disk check and then I had a power outage.

Since that point, I got a quick flash of BSOD for a fraction of a second, and it refuses to boot up. The Recovery Disk Start Up Repair cannot repair, my restore points have vanished, as has my last known good configuration details. Basically my Master Boot Record has corrupted, or one of the drivers has corrupted (Safe mode boot stops at crcdisk.sys and then it restarts sending me in a loop). Safe mode, with or without options is not available for me.

The hardware checks out okay (by both me and Dell), but I received the message that the System Volume is corrupt. Since that initial hardware check, my warranty has expired!

Bootrec did not work, and the Recovery command prompt cannot even find the c: installation of Vista even though the initial start up repair can find it.

I really do not want to reinstall from scratch, as I have customer files, trade files, turbolister, and files essential for me to get paid at the end of the month. My back up is out of date (my fault I know) but I know there are just one or two files that were destroyed by the dskchk crashing that I need to replace. I have seen other solutions around the web that I tried and didn't work, or that I didn't understand how to try. I am fairly pc-literate, but please could someone help me

in simpe terms, assuming I'm a lot thicker than what I am. After all, you know what they say about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.

SINCE THAT POINT: -

Using Partition Tabole Doctor, I have now repaired my partitions and totally lost my Vista installation apparently. NTLDR is now missing, and when I use Hiren's Boot CD 10.5 to sort this, it tells me that the driver <windows root>\system32\hal.dll

So, anyone have any suggestions before I try the http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/vista-hands...ean-install/193 solution?

Well...before you started trying this and trying that...you should have backed up the system.

If nothing else, you could have cloned the entire drive to another hard drive...and thereby have had access to data files, if not programs and O/S.

You might try that now, particularly if the boot/MBR are the only problems.

You might also wander to the Dell site and look for documentation on the "system volume is corrupt" error message. I would have to assume that means that the partition or NTFS itself is damaged.

Louis