I created an account just to post this as I suffered from the same problem. The issue is because the Vista Ultimate DVD contains both a 32-bit and 64-bit copy of Vista. You need to either get an x64 only copy of the DVD, or you can download an x64 recovery disc from Neosmart (link -
http://neosmart.net:6969/torrent.html?i ... c5f7eb94b5). With the 64-bit only recovery disc, I was able to boot into the recovery console just fine and resolved my problem.
I realize you have probably resolved this problem by now, but figured I would post this for anyone else who comes across this forum while googling for a solution.