Due to historical reasons I got a laptop with Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008R2 partitions. (boot from external wasn´t that viable)

Nothing (Windows Repair, bootrec /whateveroption) worked when I restored only the Windows 7 and WS2k8 with Acronis TrueImage. Don´t ask me through what idiotic error messages I went during repair tries. (Wrong Windows version,...)

So I grudgingly restored all three - with the little additional excursion that I thought changing the active partition to the Windows 7 partition would move the boot sector and let me format the Vista part... Oh no. Seems too logical for MS. (Dunno what I changed, but today it will let me format!)

So the real question is: Will formatting the Vista part trash things again beyond comprehension or will Windows Repair bring back the boot rec and remove Vista from the boot options? Or should I just erase all the files to avoid trashing the boot?

Where will the boot rec be (after repair) when I format the Vista? On 1st or 2nd partition?

And if I get drunk and install Windows 8.1 on the 1st, will anything work? ;-)

Thanks