Reinstalling XPS 400 to factory settings

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp
http://www.djdenham.com/Install%20Procedures.htm#Install

Two good sites.  Sounds like you did a repair install instead of deleting the partition and recreating it.

You can not just select a partition to install to, you have to first delete the partiton and then recreate it.  I beleieve the actual sequnece is to highlight the partition, Hit D to delete, enter to confirm and L to actually delete it.  Then youwill see an unpartitioned space that you will now highlight and then hit C to creat which then gives you the option to determine the space you need for that partition.  20 gigs (20000 megs) is more than ample for the OS and programs.

The links I gave you work if you follow the instructions.

Okay you have to trust me....

Deleting the partitions, ALL OF THEM, means nothing more than wiping the data off the drives.  You will be left with a drive with no partitions and no data.

You delete the partitions and recreate them in order to reload the OS.  Now is the perfect time to deploy a good backup strategy by creating three partitions.  One for the OS and programs, say 30 gigs, a second partition for your data (we're down to 110 gigs left) so may two 55 gig partitions or something relatively close to that.

Put your data on the D Drive and backup to the new E Drive.  Technically the CD Drive will be listed before these new partitions, but we can change the naming order easy enough once we get the OS installed.

The 4 GB must be a restore partition that was put on there by Dell which means you can follow a set of instructions below to restore automatically.  The other one should be around 8mb or so which is a utility partition for running diagnostics, also by Dell.

I would still, if it were me, do it the manual way, and create partitions to my liking so I would not be reliant upon one massive hard drive space.

The operating system CD maker is no longer shipping on systems invoiced after July 14, 2005.

Your option at point of sale is to purchase the operating system CD for $10. After point of sale, contact Dell and request the CD"
Systems shipped after July 15, 2004 came with Symantec PC Restore. This utility restores the computer to an "as-shipped" condition. If you haven't reformatted, repartitioned, or otherwise modified the master boot record, it should work. Click here for instructions about Symantec PC Restore.

If the Symantec PC Restore utility won't work, but still resides on your computer, a Dell customer has figured out some ways to get it to work again. Note - If you removed this partition, it is not recoverable, cannot be downloaded from the internet, and cannot be shipped from Dell. Click here for ways to fix Symantec PC Restore. Users have also reported that the partition can be restored with Ghost 2003, and Ghost 9 using the '03 capabilities of it. If you boot to the Ghost 9 CD, select Advanced Recovery Taks, select Utilities, then Restore Legacy IMage it should work - but you want to verify the image before attempting the restore. It's in a folder called IMG.

You need a Operating System Install CD - This answer was provided by Dell-ChrisM

Please use the Dell OS Recovery CD program to create the OS CD.
* Click Start- All Programs- Dell Accessories- Dell OS Recovery CD

What if the "Dell OS Recovery Utility" fails or wasn't installed by Dell?
Email or Chat with Dell. Explain your situation and the Dell representative will issue whatever CDs (Dell Media Experience, Power DVD, Sonic MyDVD, Windows operating system) you might need.

* CHAT with Dell
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/en/chat?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn

* EMAIL Dell

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_mediaexp&message.id=2495