Thanks for the encouragement everyone.... we are 64ing at this moment...!

Here's what happened.
I did reset the bios to boot first from the DVD. However it took sooooo long and I wasn't getting the reassurance that things wouldn't be reformatted so I bailed on the first go... hence my post.

With the guidance given here I tried again and was more patient. And finally it worked and I was asked where to install Win 7. (I was afraid  XP would be trashed)

So the next part of this is, all my programs are on a separate Programs drive. Dual boot remaps the drives on boot up so all the poser references will be broken. I guess I will have to reinstall Poser.
As for the other programs, do I use the Windows Migrate Program to move x86 programs into the special x86 folder or can I just move then across into this folder.

Thanks for all the help.