Help-I need an NTLDR expert-XP/Vista dual boot

[Moira]

I've talked about this a bit in a Disk Partitioning thread here, but it wasn't really the subject of the thread as it developed when another things ran off at a tangent. Since this has now got much more depressing and serious I hoped I might be lucky and find an answer here.

Basically, I resized my XP partition in Disk Management with the idea of expanding the Vista partition as it was running low on space. I found that the Vista partition just wouldn't expand though, even with unallocated space next to it.

Anyway, the next reboot I got "ntldr is missing. Press ctrl alt and del to restart". I've tried everything - running the vista rescue boot disc, the XP recovery console (though I'm not really sure what I'm doing with fixmbr) and downloading a set of so called system tools. Eventually I reinstalled Vista and copied across a saved Acronis backup to restore. I had to ditch the XP partition to do this as there wasn't room for the backup on the laptop but it had to be moved there to restore. Guess what? Once I'd finished the restore (which was a very up to date backup, taken in case anything went wrong with the resizing), I was back to the same message "ntldr is missing".

It's driving me mad that a sleek, customised, tweaked and functional operating system is sitting there, and I can't get at it. I've spent weeks working to resolve hardware issues that Vista presented and installed loads of programs etc. I've spent hours setting up other user profiles and getting Vista just how I wanted it. With the exception of bluetooth and my network printer, all the hardware conflicts were fixed and it was just how I wanted it! I'm going on holiday soon and working full time until then - I really didn't want to have to start again and try to have the laptop ready to take with me.

There has to be a way round one stupid f***ing file preventing me booting into a perfectly usable system! I'm not too bothered that I've lost the XP partition, it was becoming redundant anyway but at the moment I've got a totally useless piece of expensive junk! I'm sitting looking at an icon in my Vista tray here "Windows Media Player Found: ToshibaVista" (the laptop is on the table a few feet away).