Yes, there is a way to fix that. The file that causes the problem is a347bus.sys, located in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers
This file is the Plug and Play BIOS Extension for Windows Vista.
The solution, half-baked as it is, is to boot off of the Vista installer DVD and go to command prompt, or access the file system in some other way. Rename the a347bus.sys file to something else (a347busbroken.sys in my case) and reboot. The system should now boot, but it will complain now that it has to reinstall drivers and such. Let Vista do its thing there and it should come back up.

In my case, Vista choked at this stage too and could not fix the broken .sys file. The system actually operates without it, but with reduced functionality (some plug-and-play stuff doesn't work) and at this time I can't figure out a way of restoring the original .sys file.

If anyone knows of a way to restore the original .sys file, please do tell..