MBR Question

I have a question I was hoping someone could answer.

I bought an adapter that would allow one of my Hard Drives to be accessed via USB. I bought one and it works great, but I decided to install Windows 7 Ultimate build 7068 and my computer said that it could not install a fresh copy of Win 7 unto a USB device.

Okay, if that was the problem I decided to remove my CD RW drive and connect the hard drive instead. I then connected the CD-RW drive to the USB adapter and it worked perfectly. I was able to use the CD drive to install onto the hard drive.

I then decided that I didnt want to have my computer looking like a disassembled piece of junk, so I thought, "Hey, why not reconnect everything how it was, and just boot up Windows 7 from USB".

I put the computer back together nicely, but upon boot options it gave me 2 options:

Vista/Longhorn
Windows 7

So I chose Windows 7 only to have the computer reboot. Am I doing something wrong? Did I mess up the Main Boot Record since Windows 7 was installed from IDE instead of being connected from USB?

Is there a way to get my computer to allow me to boot up without the restart?

Let me know if anyone has any ideas or needs any more relevant information.

My problem is different from yours, but I would certainly appreciate feedback, especially from those who know what they are talking about.

I installed Windows 7 build 7077 x64 on my PC (which have fairly modest specs: Intel Core 2 Duo, Gigabyte MOBO, 2GB RAM, 160 GB Western Digital HDD, Nvidia 8600 graphics card.

I have a 1 terrabyte Samsung HDD where I store ISOs of Office, Encarta etc. I also store in it drivers for various machines I have: Samsung NC10, Samsung Q1U, Averatec 2260, Intel D865PERL, Intel D845EBG2, and the above Gigabyte. The problem with drivers is that I have to keep x86 as well as x64 versions, XP/Vista. Averatec support on the x64 side is really lamentable, thanks for W7 I managed to get all the drivers installed.

During my Gigabyte installation of W7, because I needed the drivers and ISOs to install a lot of software (I am a hopeless student of the game of chess), I installed the Samsung HDD. Afterwards when everything was done I removed the Samsung.

Mind you never in my life have I been installing and installing and installing OSs before Windows 7 came. From build 7000 to 7077. Now I am downloading 7100.

When I tried to access the Samsung again, I got the error message that the HDD cannot be access and needs to be formated. That is my problem.

As much as possible I'd like to avoid the recovery route via Restorer 2000 etc with the need to "recover" the files to another HDD. Because this way I don't think I'll be certain that the files will be recovered "intact", you know, when you try to access them later the "file corrupted" message.

I was hoping some boot files were accidentaly erased on the HDD and that if I can only replace them back the HDD will work like before. My question is this: Is this an MBR issue? Can I fix it by reinstalling the MBR? For this can I use UBCD4WIN or the repair option of a Windows 2000 or Windows Vista installation CD?

Any comments are surely appreciated.