Many problems with current installation, cousin installed vista again without removing old installation, now, no boot on any safe mode. Help?

I have formatted the partition containing Vista, but the bootloader with the 2 choices still comes up on start up. I have tried booting from the XP CD, and using recovery console, and the “fixmbr” command. That has re-written the boot record, but the bootloader still remains! Help!
PS, I dont want to have to format & reinstall Windows XP!

My laptop has a virus. I want to format the drive and load vista on to it. When I try to format it, a window pops up saying I cannot format it because windows is running on it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Hello,

I was wondering that If I partition my hard drive and store my important files (music, video etc) on the partition. i.e. have a c: and d: with my data on the d: drive and my windows vista install on the c:.
Can I then format the c: partition and clean install windows 7 on this partition and still be able to access the data on d: when it has been installed?

Thanks in advance.