problem with vista system restore. can't find operating system

Hi I bought a computer from Komplett with the follwing specifications back in November 2007. The specs are:



Qty SKU Description
1.00 318627 Komplett Intel Gamer
1.00 105353 PC box
1.00 336277 Gigabyte Triton 180 Black Aluminium Front (Without PSU)
1.00 338894 Gigabyte ODIN PRO Powersupply 550W Black, ATX/EPS, 140mm Fan, 6xSATA, SLI
1.00 334477 Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P, P35, Socket-775,ATX, GbLAN, DDR2, 1333FSB, 2xPCI-Ex16
1.00 338084 Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0GHz 1333MhzSocket LGA775, 4MB, BOXED w/fan
1.00 335238 Corsair TWIN2X 6400C5DHX DDR2, 2048MB Kit w/two CL5 1GB Dimm's, E.P.P and DHX
1.00 327330 XFX GeForce 8800GTX 570M 768MB GDDR3,PCI-Express, 2xDVI/HDTV/HDCP, 384-bit
1.00 325291 Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 500GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM
1.00 340157 NEC DVD±RW burner AD-7170 IDE Black OEM,DVD+R/+RW/DVD-R/-RW/Ram (Dual layer)
1.00 335481 Creative SB X-FI Xtreme Gamer
1.00 330707 Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Eng OEM DVD 32bit
1.00 329577 Logitech Cordless Desktop LX710 Laser,keyboard/mouse, USB, UK
1.00 325763 Samsung 22" LCD Syncmaster 225BW TCO03,1680x1050, 5ms, VGA/DVI, 700:1
1.00 321909 D-Link DWL-G510 PCI 54Mbps Wireless 802.11g


Recently I used a serial code to install a version of Nero (i think version 8) from trial to full version. I noticed my computer was a bit slow straight after this so I restarted it. Now it won't load up Windows Vista. This happens in every option (safe mode, last known good configuration) and you get as far as the bar loading Vista in the bottom of the screen. Then there is a quick blue screen (to quick to read) and the computer restarts.Since I cannot boot up I decided I want to do a system restore to a date before I installed Nero as I strongly suspect it is a problem I've heard about with Vista and software such as Nero which can create virtual drives. So I put in my Windows Vista 32 bit DVD and boot up from the CDROM by holding F12 at the gigabyte motherboard screen. It then gets to the screen where you have the option to install or repair windows vista. I click on repair and then this is where the problem I am having happens. The system recovery options screen appears but it can't find my operating system. I'm guessing this is because the drivers need to be updated for my motherboard for the hard drive and therefore the operating system to be found. There is an option to load drivers if the operating system cannot be found. I can't seem to find any that work on the motherboard cd which came with my computer so I went on the Gigabyte website and downloaded the intel ICH9R driver for windows vista x86 (32-bit) from here:



http://tw.giga-byte.com/Support/Mo [...] ctID=2533.



When I load up the extracted files from this download (which I use via an external usb hard drive) there are 2 options to pick

for setup information: iaACHI and iaStor. In each one there are probably about 7 or 8 drivers for each one and I thought it would have been the Intel® ICH8R/ICH9R SATA RAID driver in the iaStor.inf file but when adding this driver it just says adding driver for a while and then finishes and the operating system still does not appear. I have tried adding every single driver from these 2 files and the operating system has not appeared. I think it could be a problem with the BIOS perhaps because I thought I had the right driver but now I'm totally unsure what to do. My BIOS is setup as follows. Under integrated peripherals it is set to:



SATA RAID/AHCI Mode - disabled

SATA Port0-3 Native Mode - disabled

USB controller - enabled

USB 2.0 controller - enabled

USB keyboard support - enabled

USB mouse support - enabled

Legacy USB storage detect - enabled

Azalia codec - disabled
Onboard H/W 1394 - enabled

Onboard H/W LAN - enabled

SMART LAN - press enter

Onboard LAN Boot ROM - disabled

Onboard SATA/IDE device - enabled

Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl mode - IDE

Onboard serial port 1 - 3F8/IRQ4

Onboard parallel port - 378/IRQ7

Parallel port mode - SPP



I'll be honest and confess to not really knowing much about what all of this means but I also have a feeling perhaps something needs to be changed in the BIOS to recognise the hard drive and operating system or for the drivers I've downloaded to work. In the standard cmos features the Hitachi hard drive is definitely there under IDE channel 0 master. Anyway any help would be much appreciated! I really don't want to format the hard drive (only have 1 500gb hard drive which isn't partitioned with windows vista installed on it) as I have a lot of important things on the drive which aren't backed up! So what is the solution here? So annoying that just installing a simple program seems to have caused all this mess! Thanks in advance for any help!