also run hard drive diagnostics and it passed

lIs the hard drive good or has it failed?  The E520 should have the Dell recovery partition, accessed by CTRL/F11 at POST (Power On Self Test) and this will allow you to restore to the original factory condition and no discs are needed.  Have you tried this?  

Also at POST, F12, along with accessing the boot drive menu, will also access the Dell Diagnostics.  If the driver is questionable, run the diagnostics (assuming the hard drive has not failed completely) and see if anything shows up.

The other way, with a CD can get complicated without a floppy diskette to load the SATA drivers.  Give the CTRL/F11 a try first.

hi i have recently had some developments since my last post i have manged to install xp from the boot disc and that is all set up and done but when i remove the disc and try to boot normaly i get a message saying windows could not start beacause of a computer disk hardware configuration problem, now im not very literate when it comes to this kind of stuff any help would be much appreciated.

and no the hard drive was already formatted with no utilty partion

Are you trying to reinstall XP?

Are you loading the driver at the F6 prompt from a floppy disk?

Are you using this driver:

If so, then try nLiteOS.com to integrate the storage drivers into you installation files.  At the appropriate screen in nLite, choose Multiple Driver Files, select all that are shown, then use TextMode Drivers.

The support disk will not be able to load the drivers at F6.

fixitchris,

Try running the full diagnostics and report back any error codes.

How to Run the Dell™ Diagnostics Utility

If you need the Operating system disks, Request Backup Disks USA if in another Country, call Dell Tech Support in your Country.

Rick