Inspiron 6400 will not boot to XP

During boot, when the Windows XP screen appears, and the 3 bars go across the screen, after about 10 cycles,  the bars stop and the system is locked up.  Holding the power button is the only way to free it up.  Last good login does not work. 

Booting to safe mode sometimes works.  Often just locks after displaying the rdisk entries.  Again, must power off.  This happens with or without command prompt. 

Prior to the problem, I tried to burn a DVD but the system did not recognize the DVD drive.  I removed and reinserted the drive and it was recognized.  I also installed a newer version of Roxio and was able to burn a CD of all my data files (dumb luck).  Since then I sometimes get the error on boot that the drive could not be found.  And now I can no longer boot to XP. 

I finally got into Safe Mode and tried to uninstall Roxio, although I don't think that is the culprit.  Of course, I could not uninstall it in safe mode. 

I tried to install the Dell driver reset tool, but again, I could not install in safe mode.  Could not find it on the local drive. 

In safe mode, I can read the CD drive.  I tried to run the XP installation disk but my version has been patched so it won't run except to do a new install and overwrite everything - not my first choice.  I was hoping for a repair option.  I had tried to boot to the CD before but never could get that far. 

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Smitty