Thank you, T O'G, that should be more than enough information to get myself in way over my head.
Have just had a thought though; Is the "reinstallation" disc that comes with Dell laptops a full copy of Windows XP designed to be installed from scratch, I wonder? Perhaps the good folk at Dell think their buyers are ignorami who shouldn't be encouraged to fart around with their machines. Prolly not far wrong in this case.
