Need help. I can't use Dell's recovery DVD

Hello.  I would really appreciate it if someone could help me out here.

I have a Dell XPS 600 with a Dell installed DVD drive and a Dell installed CD Drive.  I'm about 18 months out of warranty.

My hard drive failed so I had to go out and get another.  I installed the hard drive without a problem.  The BIOS sees the hard drive available.

Here's where my problem occurs - when the desktop boots up it looks to the hard drive and the CD drive but never to the DVD drive. Thereby rendering my Recovery DVD...useless.

Through the BIOS, I can see the hard drive and both the CD drive and the DVD drive, but I can't instruct the BIOS to make the DVD a bootable drive.

Help.

So far, Dell has proven incredibly useless.  I have spent $50 just to talk to a human being, in Asia, of course,...no help.  Another tech told me he would order me the recovery disk on CD's, but guess what I got when DHL delivered the package...guess...c'mon guess....alright, I'll tell you...I received another recovery disk on DVD.

Incredible.  

I've tried all the usual fixes.  Swapping cables, removing drives, in short, everything that was discussed in the following two threads and more;

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_winxp&thread.id=234333&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=Tech_Talk_XPS&message.id=26069&query.id=49836#M26069

Any ideas?

Thanks,