Start>right click on my computer>Manage>Disk Management
Bring up this screen:
There you will want to make your Vista drive the active Ssytem drive. If when you restart you do not get the boot menu you will have to repair the Vista boot menu.
If Vista is installed on a second primaty(not likely) you would have to see that moved to the beginning of the drive once the XP primary was removed. When booting up with the Vista installation disk the options for repair tools is seen in the bottom of the screen while the "install now" button is seen in the top half.
The automatic fix startup problems tool is seen along with the few others on the next screen once choosing the repair tools option. That will see the boot information rewritten as well as recopy boot files needed to the Vista primary once used.
A good drive tool besides the Disk Management tool can also resize the Vista primary once the XP partition is gone unless leaving space for a storage partition afterwards. The free Linux tool GParted works well for that with the guide seen at http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/generalities/gparted.htm
While booted with the VIsta dvd you can cancel the installation and still use the partitioning tools there. But at times the MS tool always seems to leave 1-8mb of unallocated drive space later noticed in the Disk Management tool with both Vista and XP drive tools alike.