Windows Vista Vista bootfiles on another drive

If I unplug my ATA drive which contains a 7 installation on partition C Vista will not load. It is on a regular drive and has the drive letter E. The 7 installation is hopelessly contaminated and I want to do a full reinstall and delete the partition it's on. I know if I do that boot files for Vista will be lost. How do i find and move them to where they should be?
I tried to use my Vista disc to do a reinstall and put the boot files in the right place but without a previous version of windows to start from(XP) it will do nothing and that installation is on another machine.
Any ideas?

spook

 

I expect running Startup Repair should do the trick.

This is the MS information
How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows
if the first steps don't work, I would use bootrec with the /FixBoot option.

Edit: I don't use boot managers any more. The BIOS of my motherboard has the option of which hard disk to boot to. I trialled Windows 7 on a hard disk of it's own and booted to it using the boot options in the BIOS. When I was finished trialling it, I could just disconnect the Windows 7 drive or format it.

I like the BIOS method of selecting the boot HDD. There is no hesitation during bootup asking you which OS you would like to boot to.

 

The bootmanager was a big help because it showed what i needed to do and by saving the bootfiles I always have a backup. Running the Vista repair put the bootexe in the right place. So, you were both right in a way. Also, I take back all the mean things I have thought about both the Vista and 7 repair disc since it worked this time. In msconfig I just deleted everything but Vista (DefaultOS) and 7 and set them 5 seconds apart in the BIOS. I am of the opinion that dualbooting causes more problems than the benefits of having 2 OS on the same machine. I'm just going to leave 7 idle untill I can build(or better yet, buy) a new machine for it.
Problem solved.
Thanks,

spook