I rang Dell to see what they reccomended to fix the problem, and they said do a system restore, dunno if my restore points don't go back far enough or what, but it didn't work.
I had read somewhare that I may have damaged a registry key or some System32 files with my hachet cut and paste job and the best thing to do was re-install XP over the top of the current installation to repair settings and keys etc,
tried it....worked like a dream
