Vista - Weird startup problem

I'm a new guy, so be gentle with me LOL

I'm running Vista X64 and recently installed SP1. Everything was working great until I installed Norton Ghost 12. After the install, it would not recognize my C drive at all. So... I uninstalled it and rebooted.

When my comp boots, the mobo screen comes up, then it moves to the Vista load up with the green bar thing at the bottom. However, when I rebooted after the uninstall, nothing happened after the mobo screen. It just stopped loading.

After a moment, I pushed the reset button on the case. After the mobo screen, I got this message:

Windows startup is missing files or was interrupted. The problem may be fixed by

1. Load your Windows disc into your CD-ROM drive.
2. Restart your computer
3. When the loading screen comes up, click 'Repair My Install'

It also gave opens to start in safe mode or start normally.

I put in my Vista disc, restarted and ran the repair program. Unfortunately, it could not repair the startup problem. This is what it says in the logfile:

Root cause found:
---------------------------
Unspecified changes to system configuration might have caused the problem.

Repair action: System files integrity check and repair
Result: Failed. Error code = 0x2


I also tried a system restore, but it did not solve the problem either. So now, every time I reboot to start my system, I have to wait until it stops then hit reset, then hit enter on the 'Start Windows Normally' prompt to get it to load up. Everything works fine otherwise.

And yes, I contacted Symantec about this, and they kindly informed me that this was not their problem since it was an OS issue. Needless to say, I will NOT be using any Norton product anytime soon. (I now use Acronis for backups, and it works great!)

If anyone has any ideas of how to solve this problem, I would appreciate it. I really don't want to do a full reinstall, but I will if that's what it takes.

PS - My system stats are below.

Never mind, guys.

Turns out it was my external drive causing the problem. Very strange.

Hopefully I can sort it out.