Vista wont boot. File missing.

So Vista Ultimate is chugging along ok, when i turn it on one fine morning and it says

"ntoskrnl.exe missing"

Crap.
So i unplug the drive and wack it into my Vista/XP system to see if i can just copy the file over. But of course i cant because of all these screwy permission settings.

(Oh, the file IS actually there on the 'faulty' HDD )

Then i try the Vista recovery console.
Heres the fun part...
Vista DVD (orig) boots up from any pc BUT the one with the issue.
XP tho does boot. GrrrRrrrr.

So.... any ideas on how i can do a recovery/set permissions etc so i can copy that file back over???

I cant do a straight copy, and i cant attempt to use the vista recovery console.

TIA.

Ps. Swaping over to Mac's at work right now. What a JOY! Huh... everything is already installed? No chipset, gfx, lan, audio, keyboard, mouse, wifi or bluetooth drivers to install on a million cd's. I have 2 discs for an entire office of Macs. OS, and iWork/Office. Thats IT! Then I go to install the print drivers the other day. HUH, they are already installed! You plug something in an it just works. No annoying prompts "search disk or online", it just works. M$ were happy to screw me tho by making it impossible to transfer emails from Outlook to M$ Entourage for mac. Thanks Bill. I can see how people dont feel guilty for stealing your software.

No message.

Get the "Booting from CD/DVD..."

Then just goes straight to booting from C: and then the error.

Not sure if its pc/bios etc... as XP WILL boot off the disc, but knoppix(linux) wont. Fark.

Its all stock and was running 100% before the mysterious file F up.
E4x00 1.8
Gigabyte Mobo (cant rem #, but its decent enough)
3Gb (2x1 + 2x512)
200Gb sata + 120 ide + dvd ide
Cheapo ati? gfx

Borrowed a mates copy of vista ultimate, which booted. YAY.
Ran a repair setup, but it said nothing was wrong with it...
I can access the command prompt and will try copy the file over that way tonight, tho something tells me that wont fix it.

More details on the error...
On boot it says: invalid boot.ini
then proceeds to the usual ntoskrnl.exe missing error.

it sounds like the hard drive is corrupted, either that or the boot section is hosed. Usually errors like yoyu are getting are red herrings, it's not just those particular files that are missing , it's everything that is missing but those were just the filers the system tried to access first so it could boot the OS.