I had a situation where anything I called about with an eMachine, tech support told me it was the HD and wanted to RMA it. I suspected it was so they could swap out another one with a fresh Windows installed without having to spend any more time on the phone - probably saves them money. Who knows if that is the case here.
Your OP said that you activated another partition which should still probably be set back and Startup Repair run just to see if that fixes it. But I can understnd why you might want to just leave it to Tech Support to send a new drive with new Win7.
If the Product key sticker isn't replaced when they reinstall the OS on new HD, be sure to install Belarc Advisor as soon as you get it back to save the Product key in a safe location where you can always find it.
You never replied as to whether you were able to copy the files out, which would make it feel as though we helped you some at least since you won't lose your files. If so, as I mentioned, it probably means your Win7 is there to be started up if marked Active. Or not.