That's probably good advice I'm sure, if only I knew what it meant. I tried combofix as advised earlier and it found 522 registry errors. (Sounds like an awful lot to me) I assume that was much of my problem. I'm gonna run as is for a bit and see what happens. Thanks gentlemen for all your responses and helpful advice.
If you need to grab an image of your PC before it dies the DriveImage XML program I mentioned can make a low-level "shadow" copy even while the computer is running in case you need to restore anything in the future in the even of disk failure. You would another computer or an external drive though so probably more trouble than it's worth at this point it sounds like ... Good luck!
Thought that XP media would be free by now... Years ago bought an e-machine. First time experienced OS pre-loaded on the hard disk by box makers. Called them about getting the media (what if my harddisk went south?). They said "SOL". Later bought Hewlett Packard (Compaq) PCs. They have a nice policy/feature that they let you create one set of OS backup CD (or DVD now). Actually you don't even need that in most cases. Because they format a small D: partition to store a virgin copy of Windows OS (Vista, Win7, etc.). In the event that you can't boot or keep getting blue screens you can restore to a virgin OS state right from the extra partition on the hard drive. Unless the whole disk is hosed. Dunno about Dell. They should do similar.
With persistent blue screen issues I wouldn't press on. Unless you don't store any useful data on your box. If you use your box for your productivity activities (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, or photos, etc.), it is a lot of hessle to deal with lost productivities from unstable hardware/OS.
be careful using those registry fixit utilies. They can accidentally mess your computer up worse. At the very least make sure you create a restore point before using a registry tool
Not always the case, but the main culprit behind BSOD is usually a failing hard disk. Go grab a free disk monitoring proggie like Crystal Disk (http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html) and see how your HD holds up. BTW Dell computers are inferior and their customer service is abominable. I would trash Dell for something like Toshiba.
I've had mostly Dells for the last 10 years (currently have 5). No significant problems. Tech support has been excellent. But then, I've always bought from their business lines... like Precision.