Backup image will not boot

Short version: I have a back up image (.tib) of an XP SP3 system that will not boot. I've recovered to a new partition, all the files are there, but nothing I do (including a Windows repair, and restoring the boot.ini and NTLDR) can get the recovered partition to boot. Similarly, I've been unable to mount the image in a virtual machine (either through VMware converter and player, or using Acronis to convert the tib to a VHD for Windows 7 Virtual PC). Is my original image corrupted beyond repair? Is there anything else I can do?

Long version: Since October of 2008, I was running XP SP3 as the main and only operating system. In early August, I got a new hard drive for storage purposes (1.5T), divided it into 4 equal partitions, and decided to load Windows 7 Ultimate RC 7100 onto one of the partitions. This automatically took control of the booting of my system, and gave me the dual boot option on start up to either go to XP (C:) or W7 (D:). I decided that I wanted to move up to the final release of W7, and bought a license. However, I had a number of programs and configurations already set up in XP, and wanted to keep dual booting. To complicate matters, I wanted W7 on the smaller, dedicated system disk that XP was currently occupying, and wanted to move XP to an empty partition of the new, 1.5T drive (E:).

So here is what I did. I made a backup image of C:, and then restored the backup to E:, so at this point I had two identical file systems on 2 different drives/partitions. I verified that all my files had been restored, but I was unable to boot into that recovery. The W7 boot menu didn't recognize it. I tried using EasyBCD to create a new entry for XP, but it would instead boot into C: (even if I made sure all the pointers were at E:). I then decided to unplug the primary drive, but I received the "NTLDR is missing" error. I followed various online instructions to copy the NTLDR files off the XP disk, and use repair to fixboot, but still nothing. I figured that perhaps the W7 bootloader, which is located on C:, might have been problematic.

October 22 rolls around, and I still cannot boot into the recovered XP. But since I have an image of C:, and all the files restored to E:. I figure I'll debug it later, and perhaps installing the official release of W7 may help. I decide to proceed and format C: for a clean install of W7. Everything goes fine, except I no longer get any dual boot options when loading. I decide to again try to add an item to the boot loader (this time using command line instructions, not easyBCD), and I get an entry for XP in the boot menu. However, when I attempt to log into XP, a brief error message flashes, and then the system automatically restarts. I took me a dozen times to hit pause at the right time, but eventually I saw the message was "invalid boot.ini file" Again, I attempt to repair the file using the XP disk and repair, this time following isntructions that suggest to use bootcfg rebuild instead of fixboot, however the rebuild could NOT find my XP, and suggested I run chkdsk, which I ran. But still nothing had changed. rebuild didn't work, and I couldn't boot into XP.

I then decided to try the virtual machine route. I tried a recovery inside Windows Virtual PC, XP mode, which crashed. I tried using VMware player but got "Failed to open virtual machine: Failed to query source for information." I tried converting the file with VMware converter, "The source virtual machine is not recognized". I tried Acronis' converter to a VHD, and tried up open that with Virtual PC, and got "Error while opening the virtual machine: File XXXXXX.vhd" line 1: Syntax error."

So, in short, is there anything I can do to boot from the recovered partition? Is there anything I can do with the .tib file to fix it or possibly load into a virtual machine? Thanks!