Just in case someone needing this answer actually stops by to read it. I thought Mr. Goodells dsrfix program fixed the partition. In fact it did not. I found this out after calling dell tech support and hearing the tech suggest that I upgrade ram for win 7, oh and I probably need a new HDD. Well I have recently dl'd  an iso of Ubuntu 10.11. So wtf I installed it. And with barely any complaints it did install -on the same part that should have had win xp. So then I installed xp over that And sure enough the install finished. Six or eight devices broken but it did install. Huh, Ubuntu puts one in the win column.
On my mothers inspiron b130 I ran Autoruns and found that dozens of ms programs could not be (signature)verified and rthe machine is running very slow, so I backed-up files. And got ready to restore to factory. After a while I found the ctrl+f11 hot key, but the recovery console(?) said something is wrong and to call tech support. And for the last 9 days it has hung up after "loading PBR descriptor 2 done". Although once in a while it would print "checking hardware configuration" and hang behind a black screen. I put in my oem xp home sp3 disk but it wont go any further. The drive works cause I can load my "ultimate boot disk". Eventually, I found Mr. Goodalls "dsrfix" and that said the partitions are good and the right type. So the prob must be the master boot record, right? I can't use Mr. G's mbrsaver because I don't know anyone else running a dell with xp. I have found a dell driver link (d media center or something) which seems to have helped. I can once again get to dell pc restore. Symantics ghost 8.3 however, stops right after the splash screen loads and says "abort 36000  general exception error occured" . I can't figure what I'm doing wrong. I would post a dump if I could find one. I can't seem to dir C: in dos   Please help! The water is getting deep over here.
installing xp from factory partition