> I've got some sort of XP Install disk

Just to follow up...

1) The Dell system restore (from hidden disk partition) didn't work.
    ctrl-F11 appeared to do nothing and booted (tried to boot) the main
    non-working WXP partition.
2) "Repair" didn't work.  It did it's stuff, but the resulting system
    still got the same BSoD on reboot.
3) I was able to save all the partitions from the relevant drive using
    "system rescue CD" and "partimage" and a USB drive.  The latest  
rescue
    image has come a long way since the first time I used one...
4) My "some sort of XP Install" appears to be a "real" windows install
    disk rather than a "system restore disk", so it worked fine and  
didn't
    overwrite anything other than the C: partition I aimed it at.
5) It didn't install the machine-specific drivers, though, and I  
couldn't
    find the relevant driver disk.  But Dell has this nice feature on  
their
    web site where "your account" keeps track of all the systems  
you've bought,
    and has driver page that specifically tells you which drivers are  
relevant
    to the system AS YOU BOUGHT IT (and perhaps if you've told it of  
upgrades,
    it keeps track of that too.)  So I was able to download everything  
I needed.
6) It had to download a bunch of stuff to upgrade to SP3, of course.   
The new
    "bare" partition was saved (via partimage) so maybe next time  
this'll be
    easier (I actually have ghost backups of the old partition, but I  
don't
    particularly trust them.  Even if the computer hadn't gone belly- 
up, it
    was pretty overdue for a clean install.)
7) Now, I need to figure out which of the apps carefully installed on  
the
    separate "bin" partition are actually dependent on crap windows  
scattered
    over C:, and which will still work.  Sigh.

BillW

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