Formatting + Partitioning after losing Vista

Hello,

I am Angry at myself for doing this, but here goes .. roughly in this order I did the following

In management console i made the D partition (data) 'active' ( because i'm daft ) - C was the Windows Vista

I then found that my C and D partitions were labelled wrongly, C was now D , D was now C ( used command prompt/ diskpart to see this ) because the message I was getting upon boot up was 'BOOTMGR is missing - press alt + del to Restart

So I downloaded a Recovery disk, as I had not made 1, and eventually I got to the Repair your Computer screen - chose my language - then got the 1.Repair your startup (can't coz no o/s)
2,3,4, 5 - open command prompt

Problem IS .. There isn't an operating sytem listed to actually repair

I then started to mess with the commands in DISKPART to Format and Partition the Disc ready to perhaps buy a vista dvd to Install , but I keep getting the same messages on boot up -

1. BOOTMGR is missing or
2. boot.wim is missing and sometimes ...
3. PX Rom is unable to load , please check cables - not often with this 1

I thought my MBR was messed and triedf all these fixes like , get a command prompt and do bootrec.exe /fixmbr and it says it has done that successfully ... but It still gives me the BOOTMGR missing error on boot .... but finaly, could someone PLEASE step me through how to Format my hard disk(0), and partition it ready for an operating system.... There are many posts on this, but i have tried a primary partition, formatting it, making it active, and I cannot get anywhere,

What would you SUGGEST I do, i guess, using diskpart for partitioning and formatting ???

I have always been able to dig myself out of pc messes via online help and intuition, but this has done me in, any suggestions I would massively appreciate..

It just seems that after making the D partition Active, I started a right mess-up of my Vista

My laptop is a Toshiba L300 satellite with Vista home premium - C : was 120 gig partition (vista) and D: was 120 gig Data partition, also there was a hidden recovery partition, Now there is Nothing there ??

I would be willing to have XP on it if that helps, heck, i'd be happy at windows 95 ... do ya reckon a DOS based recovery of data is possible to find the old operating system, even after reformatting the harddisk a few times and unsuccessfully trying to partition it ??

wow, please help if you can - Thanks .... FRED C