Novice needs to reformat HD - is it that difficult?

If you choose to restore from the Dell recovery partition then you will basically go through a normal Windows installation process and will be prompted for some info along the way. I'm sure that Dell document their recovery process on their support site.

Just to let you know if you're interested, a friend managed to reformat and reinstall XP for me - completely successfully.

Looked over his shoulder as he was doing it and it isn't that complicated generally - although he did run into a few hiccups which he overcame but in fairness, I wouldn't have known what to do.

Bit of a pain time-wise and updating Windows, finding drivers etc (especially on dial-up) but would probably attempt it myself if I ever needed to again.