Russ,
     One question, is the drive inside the laptop SATA or IDE?  If it is
SATA, that driver did not come with XP.   I found that out the hard way
doing an image for some IBM laptops for my job.  If I booted with the XP
install disc and did the install, all was well.  When I rebooted, no hard
drive found.  I used a USB floppy with a SATA driver to troubleshoot and
sure enough, I could boot with the disk providing the SATA driver.

    There is a way around it though.  Download the SATA driver from the
Dell support site.  (You should have a service tag on the laptop to put
in.)  From there, get a program called Nlite at http://www.nliteos.com/.
You will need to provide the Windows CD for the install files.  What it
does is give a windows install CD that slipstreams the SATA driver in and
it gets installed with the OS.  (In short, the hard drive access will
actually stay.)

hope that helps,
Derek

         PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
                     visit our download web page at:
                  http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml