This part of Dan's paper may be of interest to you:  [URL] I wouldn't try to restore the Dell MBR if I could manage to perform the task manually.  Unless of course you are preparing the computer for another who might find this feature useful. Don't forget, however, if the restore image was for the Dimension 3000, that is the only computer on which it will run without additional surgery.
I have salvaged two (02) Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 40 GB hard drives from two old Dell Dimension 3000 desktop computers that contained Win XP Pro software.  The hard drives both contained three partitions:  the utility partition, the OS and data partition and a recovery partition.  Prior to removing the hard drives from the Dell 3000 units, I overwrote data with zeros then deleted the OS and data partition on both units using the killdisk utility.  This was done to satisfy the original owner who had sensitive information on that partition on both units.  Because there is a recovery partition on both drives, my suspicion is that I may be able to recover the original OS.  That poses several essential questions: 1. How do I access the hidden restore partition?  I have tried all the function keys normally used on booting without sucess.     2. How would I create a new OS and data partition?  I have tried an old copy of partition magic that will not execute by reason of an error code 006.  I tried installing a new copy of Win Pro and it went through the process of creating a partition in the unallocated space previously occupied by the OS and data partition and formatted same.  I cancelled the installation thinking that the new partition was created and formatted; however, utility software indicated the partition was in fact not created.  Would appreciate any suggestions.  
Operating System Recovery