BleepingComputer.com: Windows Xp And Vista Dual-boot Error

I'm having problems after trying to create a dual-boot on my SATA drive, that is having Vista, and adding XP. So after creating an XP partition, the computer will boot into the auto-detecting BIOS screen and freeze up. I cannot even enter the setup in BIOS or boot menu to change my boot device. I uninstalled the drive and changed my boot devices, but it still freezes up after reinstalling the SATA drive. I know the hard drive is causing the boot problem. Temporarily I have installed XP on a small IDE hard drive for now. If I could, I would try to delete the XP partition on the SATA and repair Vista, but I can't get past the frozen BIOS screen even if the IDE drive is the 1st boot device. How safe is it to plug in the SATA hard drive after booting into Windows? Would Windows even detect it for the purposes of deleting a partition? Any other ideas? I know I messed probably messed up creating the dual boot, I won't try it again. I'm not concerned about saving data, I already backed it up, I just don't want to shell out another 120 dollars for a new hard drive.
Here is the article I used to guide me. http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp.

fyi-I CANNOT even boot from any cds, floppy drives, when the SATA drive is connected. I cannot even change my boot device while it is in. Popping in Wondows XP or Vista disks seem to be out of the question while the drive is in.

Fixed it....sort of. I lost my data on the SATA drive, but I got the drive back in usable form. I wasn't sure if it was safe to be plugging in the SATA drive after the boot with power running. It was dead if I didn't, so without a choice that's what I did. So XP booted normally from the IDE drive. The SATA drive was detected and a drive letter was shown. I checked my partitions on the SATA drive. They had gone bad. I went ahead and deleted them in Administrative Tools. I reloaded Windows Vista onto the SATA drive. Now I am dual booting with two different drives. Don't know why I didn't try it before, It is alot safer this way.