I experienced the same problem this morning...I visited several sites and had many solutions: the modify bios remedy, the disk manager remedy, the device manager remedy, the reformat remedy, the re-install windows xp remedy, the get dell service remedy....none worked. Then I stumbled on this site..google led me to you..on the third attempt -- had to use different wordings in the google query to get to different sites. Oh Bliss...it worked. But I did not wait 30 mins...just 5 and it worked.
Thanks for keeping this thread alive. This should go up somewhere permanent and not be buried deep in an archive. People like me spend hours and $$$ looking for a solution that is just so simple.
Thanks once again...best wishes to all
buddyperx