Can't boot after Partition magic :(

Inspiron 6400 win vista To cut a long story short after 2 crashes on new laptop I decided to partition HD to ensure no lost data if I had to restore I stupidly used partition magic to do this (search google to find out it's not a good idea and that vista can do this itself! :( ) It found errors on HD - I thought oh that must be why it's crashing so fixed them. Now it won't boot or restore When I use partition magic it shows two partitions and a space it describes as bad. trying to install from vista disc shows un-partitioned space. trying to create a partition here is met by an error that a partition can't be made in this area I have spoken for ages to dell tech support about this and run the Dell hardware check - All ok any ideas on how to get back to a working system? If I create a working partition can I then use restore? Or should I delete all partitions and start again? if so how do I recreate the backup by F11 system and the mediadirect partition. The moral is - check before you do stuff - not after :)