Success! VL6 cleared the issue of the MBR. Am writing this from VL7. The problem was most likely mine as I had kept trying to add another CDRW (it was CDROM!) and another hd, all of which kept changing how the drives were labeled.
I haven't tested the others yet, but I should be to boot to WinXpPro, VL6 and VL7. The others were working before I reinstalled VL7 - again! Now to get used to it