Need Dual Boot Fix

I hope this doesn't get long-winded, but I'll try to explain what I did and what I need... my computer had 1 SATA HD with XP Pro installed initially. I decided, later, to give Vista a try and installed a 2nd SATA HD (new). To be sure Vista wasn't dependent upon my XP OS, I booted from the Vista installation DVD and freshly installed Vista to the 2nd drive. It offered me the option of dual-booting, which I accepted.

Now... I have drive 0 which I'll call my XP drive, and drive 1 which I'll call my Vista drive. I assumed all my Vista boot files, tracks, etc. would be on the Vista drive. Wrong. If I change my SATA drive priority in BIOS to boot from the Vista drive, I get the "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER". Apparently all the needed boot files got installed on the XP drive.

I've perused the forums and tried several "fixes" put forth by helpful individuals. I've tried EasyBCD and Vista Boot Pro. I've moved files from the XP drive to the Vista drive, I've run Vista's installation DVD and used the repair option, but no matter what I do... if I make the Vista disk the bootable disk in BIOS, I get the above error. Something is missing in the boot sector. I'm hoping someone here will have the answer.

I think this is normal behaviour - afaik there is only ever one active boot partition, which in yourcase is drive 0, drive 1 does not have an active boot sector. The boot sector contains the dual-booting software, and the boot partition of both OS's. What I would suggest is disconnecting drive 0, and then run vista repair on drive 1, ensuring that drive 1 is set to bootable in BIOS. That should install a boot partition on the drive and make it bootable. You should then be able to put back in the xp drive and access it from the drive 1 boot partition. But whatever you do, the OS's will always be linked this way. What you can also try is virtualisation, where you could run xp within Vista (I recommend VirtualBox, as its free and easy to use).