What you did originally was to install Win 7 with the XP drive set as primary. The Win 7 boot files were placed in the XP partition and the XP install was incorporated, as is normally done.
When you reflashed your bios, what probably happened is that you reversed the order of the drives in the bios so the boot files were now inaccurate.
The Diskpart instructions SIW2 is giving you are correct, although if you have access to Disk Management, you do not need to go that route. You can just use Disk Managment to set partitions active. You cannot set them to inactive, however.
You need to get the Win 7 install booting normally and worry about XP later. I would set the Win 7 partition active (which the diskpart instructions do) and then set the drive to first priority in the bios. You can then leave the XP drive in or not.
Now doing a repair install should repair you boot situation. Then use EasyBCD to regain your dual boot menu.
Basically, SIW2 has a great deal of experience in this, do not worry about his instructions.
Dear Saltgrass & SIW2:
First, again, as always - thank you for taking time to help me.
Second - it didn't work; but it did produce a new error message, so - progress? Here's what I did: Saltgrass, I did what you suggested, and I went into Disk Management. I then found my Win 7 drive, highlighted it by clicking on the partition, Right-Clicked, and chose to "Make this partition Active". I also left my XP HDD in, since you said it was ok.
Next, I restarted w/my DVD in, chose "Hit any key" to launch from teh 7 DVD, and chose Repair, and then chose Startup Recovery. But after I chose my 7 drive and asked it to search for repairs, guess what? It came back and said that it found none.
So I then rebooted, w/out my 7 DVD in, and a new error message came up. It read: "BOOTMGR is missing (Press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart)" This is different than the "Disk boot failure" message I have been receiving.
So I then restarted two more times from the DVD, each time "Hitting any key", launching from the DVD, choosing Repair, and again both times, clicking on Startup Recovery. Each and every time (three in total) it came back with "No errors found." But I again rebooted w/out the DVD, and again, received the "BOOTMGR is missing" error.
Any thoughts on the next step(s)? And yes, my Win 7 HDD is first in the BIOS boot order. Also, both drives are currently "active", not sure if that's a problem or not. But clearly, my 7 HDD is still somehow locked into a dual-boot scenario, and something is not right. Finally, if you do want me to use EasyBCD for something, please be very specific on what I am to do, because I am very unfamiliar w/that program. Thank you again in advance.
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