Meh. No luck. Only recovery solution I can figure is to format the drive and reinstall Windows 7 and start over.
The route I took was a) install Win 7 on top of the corrupted install. This moves all the old program files and Windows dir to Windows.old. b ) Booting from an alternate Windows partition, restore the Windows.old contents back to the root.
This once worked for me when Vista was installed over XP, but doesn't work with Win 7 over Win 7. There are far too many hidden artificacts (like the BCD, and some directories that will not appear even when 'show hidden files and directories' is enabled) that are not backed up as files into Windows.old. As a result, even the registry hives, including the user's, will be unable to load as though nothing happen. I was able to boot, but I noticed the wrong partition was C: and the system partition was @ D:. Etc.
Etc., etc.
Fun stuff, screwing around like this is. I love bein a geek. (Losing whatever data I had, not so fun.)