Excellent, glad you got all the data back.
To tell you the truth I was 90% sure that would work for you. It was only because of the clear and complete descripton of the problem and symptoms that made it easy for me.
I have seen what you are now encountering many many times.
If you look close you should see that the blinking cursor is actually on the second line down and not the very top left "home" position.
Thats a missing or incorrect MBR, very easy to fix but it may cost you another blank CD.
Give me a half hour or so, I first want to see if it can be correctly done with the partition wizzard CD you already made.
Dave