Yes you did, and yes I do - just had to ask real nice.
Well, both the media creation tool and the system restore disk had tools to try to fix a Windows install - none of the tools were able to bring it to life.
So I bit the bullet and used the restore disk. A couple funny things about the restore disk: first it's on a DVD-R, second is that this install of Windows isn't exactly the same as what was on the system originally. There are a couple of programs installed that originally weren't (games, Skype, etc.), there are settings I don't remember seeing before and some I do remember I can't seem to find yet. Oh well, at least it's running again.
I just wish it didn't take so long to configure Windows, the to-do list keeps getting longer faster than I can take things off it.