windows vista not loading right

I'll try to keep this as succinct as I can.

My old desktop used to run ok until I installed comodo time machine on it which totally messed it up and I couldnt get windows to start.
After getting a new latop , I put the old machine to one side for over a year , thinking that it would never work again.
Decided to send off for a drive-to-usb cable in the hope I could salvage some data off it , but a few weeks ago I turned it on and it started installing windows vista on its own.
I had vista up and running and decided to use spinrite to salvage the data I had lost.
Im not sure what I did , but now windows wont load.
It says "boot from cd " , and I cant access the bios to change the boot order.
Fortunately I sent off for a pc recovery disc that has a few hundred programs on it like mini xp , recova , hijack this , hirems boot cd etc....as well as lots of dos programs.

However , even with all these tools , im still not sure what to use to make vista boot properly again.
Can anyone help me out ?

Thanks in advance