Vista boot partition problem

Somehow I managed to mess up my boot disk by converting it to dynamic. Now
whenever I boot, I need to:

> Boot the Windows DVD
> Do Repair and open the command window, then do DISKPART
> List the disks and see that the boot disk is FOREIGN
> Select the foreign disk and import it
> Find out which volume was assigned to C and assign it a different drive letter
> Assign the foreign partition to drive C
> Exit from the command prompt and select the Repair option, letting it fix the partition

This will now let that drive boot.

I'm running Vista Ultimate with several SATA and USB drives attached - the
boot drive is SATA. I also see a strange drive in disk manager (once it's
booted) showing as "foreign"a 479mb partition that I don't recognize. I'm
tempted to delete it, but won't until I know that it wouldn't hurt anything.

Is there anything that I can do to avoid this process every time I reboot?

Thanks

Jon