Ok, this is very weird, even though I've already listed the steps I was trying before with no fix to the missing mbr press ctrl+alt+del to reboot issue, I examined a backup made by a fresh install of windows 7, the first thing I noticed is a file on the root of the drive called bootmgr, and it was missing on my non working windows 7 partition, so I copied it over onto the windows 7 partition, tried a reboot failed.... but the error went from missing mbr press ctrl+alt+del to reboot to file\boot\bcd status 0xc000000f... at least it was showing something?!? , I re-did the steps on the link above "manually repairing the vista bootloader"
1) bootrec.exe /fixmbr
2) x:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force
3) del c:\boot\bcd .... ERROR COULD NOT FIND FOLDER??? continued anyway...
4) bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd
Rebooted pc ... and IT FINALLY WORKED!!!
I have my windows 7 installation fully working again and it's not relying on another drive to allow it to boot ... windows 7 and windows vista are now completely separate
and finally working correctly