Hey Guys,
I have been trying to reply but could not sign in with any username or PW combination I could relate. Will re-register I guess.
At any rate I have been in & out of the setup with so many tries I am not at all sure what finally succeeded in the usable solution. But it will ultimately boot into a new installation of win 7 on a new HD, so my wife can get to her emails....Whew!
The solution: it boots into post with text options to "press f1 for....", "press f2 for....", etc. I can press f1 to continue and "bingo", the new HD with Win 7 starts windows and we are where we need to be. So I will let well-enough alone, accepting the one extra step process.
The computer is a Dell Optiplex 755 from EBay with Vista OS as I got it. The HD in it will not be recognized by the computer or as an external through my other computers, so I assume it is dead. At any rate, short of buying a new computer, I am done with this one for now.
Thanks again for all your helpful suggestions and I apologize for my late response.
Joe