Thinkpad X61S recovery

The laptop that I use at work, an IBM Lenovo Thinkpad X61S, has suffered a case of brain loop while installing Service Pack 1 of Visual Studio 2008 / .NET 3.5. This means, that I cannot start the computer in Windows Vista. I am now doing the following to recover Windows Vista as well as recover data:

1. During boot, pressing F8 opened an overview of boot methods, e.g. "safe mode".
2. I chose the first option: "Repair Your Computer".
3. I logged in to Rescue and Recovery with an administrator account.
4. I opened a command prompt.
5. I connected a USB hard disk.
6. I copied data from the C-drive to the USB drive.
7. I recovered the system to its initial state (as when it was delivered).
8. After that I am going to install programs etc. (e.g. VS2008/.NET 3.5 SP 1 before I work on the computer!!!!).
9. Finally I will copy data from the USB drive.