Restoring Vista's MBR so F11 actually loads the recovery partition?

Hey guys, I have a Pavilion m8277c that came out of the factory with Vista 32-bit. I know from experience that by dual booting and installing another OS, either with another version of Windows (newer or older) or Linux, overwriting the MBR will cause F11 to not work in loading the recovery partition at startup (in fact, in the past I tried a Windows 7 beta and when I decided to wipe my hard drive clean some time after that, I had to use the recovery disks that I thankfully made before doing this experiment, as my recovery partition was nonfunctional). Right now I have a triple boot of Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Ubuntu Linux, with Linux's bootloader (GRUB) occupying the MBR, which could load any of the three OS's.
Now, I decided to get rid of Linux altogether and wipe my hard drive clean again (I keep all my files on an external hard drive and I don't have much software to reinstall, plus I like keeping my system as lightweight as possible). I know that I can't use the recovery partition again this time, but I was wondering, that since from now on, I'm only going to be booting a Windows OS that's older than the factory preinstalled one, I can use Vista's bootloader to select between Vista and XP. I know that since Vista was preinstalled and so the recovery disks install it first, XP has to be installed afterwards. XP's bootloader will occupy the MBR and will not recognize Vista and also will cut off the link to the recovery partition again. I've heard of this program called EasyBCD that has been updated to support XP and restore Vista's boot record (source) so I believe I could actually restore Vista's MBR without having to use the recovery disks to fix them.
I just want to know that if I were to restore Vista's bootloader by running EasyBCD, would that also fix the link to the recovery partition so that when I press F11 on bootup, the recovery partition would load? Or would I have to run my recovery disks to restore a custom MBR, or is it not possible at all to restore the recovery partition's functionality after a second OS has been installed after Vista? I could try it out since I believe my recovery disks are still functional, but I don't have much time right now for troubleshooting, so it would be better if someone else has already confirmed that it works and I could go ahead without issue.
Thanks!
(by the way, I know that Microsoft doesn't like it if we make more than one copy of a recovery disk, since they can install Windows on a blank HDD on any computer, but will copying a recovery DVD with a DVD burner allow the new set to work? I've had my old set for a while and I fear that they'll fail soon. Maybe there's a way to hack HP's recovery disk creation program so that we could make a second set?)

Making a copy of your Recovery Disks is a good idea.I have done it myself and can verify they work. I have also used EasyBCD on a dual boot machine and found it quite easy.However I don't know whether F11 for Recovery is restored.I tend to doubt it,since F11 is looking for partition 2 of 2 partitions to boot from and there are 3. It would be an interesting experiment-let me know if you try it.
Another option that usually works is using Disk Management to mark the recovery partition as active>>
1.Right-click on "Computer" icon and select manage.
2.This will launch the Microsoft Management Console.
3.On the left side of the MMC, click on "Disk Management" and it will show you all of the partitions.
4.Right-click on the "HP Recovery" partition and select "Mark as Active Partition."
5.When the warning prompt appears, select "Yes" - Reboot and it will automatically boot into the Recovery Manager (without pressing F11).
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