That's why.

What, you want that in English?

"boot" from "bootstrap" as in raising one's self by, means your PC boots through a bunch of phases. Just after the BIOS gets the hardware ducks marching in a row, it checks the hard drives for a boot sector (old Windows) or a "/boot" folder (Linux and now, apparently, Windows 7). That boot sector in turn loads the OS, wherever it is.

If you've ever set up a PC to boot from multiple operating systems, you messed around at this level. In that case the boot sector/folder knows how to branch to OSes stored on various hard drives depending on which one you pick.

Sounds like your boot folder was located on E and set to boot Windows from C.

Until you kicked your PC squarely in the middle of the boot process--about nut high, if you must--and took out the boot step. Nothing gonna work after that.

Windows, AFAIK, still doesn't handle it well when you start copying parts of its core files around. Not surprised things went from bad to worse when you started trying to delete system files and reformatting the drive and renaming the boot folder. Don't do that. With Windows you must simply throw your hands in the air and despair.

You restored from the Windows 7 DVD, if I understand right, and it worked with E: reformatted? Hmmm...I'll guess that you now have a /boot folder on your C drive. Or maybe it did it with an old-school boot sector. Interesting.

Glad I'm still able to get by on Windows XP. I haven't had to suffer through any of this stuff.

OTOH, my friendly Sikh delivery guy, who resembles Santa Claus in a blue turban, just brought me a tablet PC running Android (aka Linux). Pretty cool toy, and makes me wonder even more why I should waste money upgrading Windows. I like being off that grid.