Dell System F11 Recovery not working

I have 5 year old dell Inspiron which needs to be returned to factory settings or the OS reinstalled. I have used the F11 restore after an attempted install of Procomm turned it into a paperweight right after I first got it. This worked fine and was no big deal. Until now the computer has run fine; and now warranty/service has run out, and it struggles with the smallest task. I went to reset again after backing everything up and it reports system restore can not be completed and goes into reboot. I dont have the disc from Dell for XP. Is there any way to return the PC to factory settings; or get the operating system re-installed after wiping the hard drive without the disc.

-1 thing I'm not sure of that may be causing this is a reƖative came over with an external drive a year or so ago to store our pictures off our PC. While there he added Symantec System restore. could this conflict with Dells system restore? I believe they are made by the same software company but neither of them are working, I've tried both.

Thanks

you can use xp oem media (make sure you have the right version IE home or pro) and use the windows key on the microsoft sticker on your pc. Or call dell and have them ship you a set of recovery disks.

Have you done a Hard drive test? The hard drive may be bad

I will contact Dell for the disks. How do I test the hard drive? is tihs done through windows? it is still working although it is very unresponsive and takes several minutes for the smallest of tasks. Thanks for your help.

Manual steps to run Chkdsk at the command prompt
Click Start, and then Run.
In Open, type cmd, and then press ENTER.
Use one of the following procedures:
To run Chkdsk in read-only mode, at the command prompt, type chkdsk, and then press ENTER.
To repair errors without scanning the volume for bad sectors, at the command prompt, type chkdsk volume:/f, and then press ENTER.

Note If one or more of the files on the hard disk are open, you will receive the following message:
Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)
Type Y, and then press ENTER to schedule the disk check, and then restart your computer to start the disk check.
To repair errors, locate bad sectors, and recover readable information, at the command prompt, type chkdsk volume:/r, and then press ENTER.

Note If one or more of the files on the hard disk are open, you will receive the following message:
Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)
Type Y, and then press ENTER to schedule the disk check, and then restart your computer to start the disk check.
Manual steps to run Chkdsk from My Computer or Windows Explorer
Double-click My Computer, and then right-click the hard disk that you want to check.
Click Properties, and then click Tools.
Under Error-checking, click Check Now. A dialog box that shows the Check disk options is displayed,
Use one of the following procedures:
To run Chkdsk in read-only mode, click Start.
To repair errors without scanning the volume for bad sectors, select the Automatically fix file system errors check box, and then click Start.
To repair errors, locate bad sectors, and recover readable information, select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box, and then click Start.
Note If one or more of the files on the hard disk are open, you will receive the following message:
The disk check could not be performed because the disk check utility needs exclusive access to some Windows files on the disk. These files can be accessed by restarting Windows. Do you want to schedule the disk check to occur the next time you restart the computer?
Click Yes to schedule the disk check, and then restart your computer to start the disk check.
The following table lists the exit codes that Chkdsk reports after it has finished:
Collapse this tableExpand this tableExit code Description
0 No errors were found.
1 Errors were found and fixed.
2 Disk cleanup, such as garbage collection, was performed, or cleanup was not performed because /f was not specified.
3 Could not check the disk, errors could not be fixed, or errors were not fixed because /f was not specified.

For more information about Chkdsk, visit the following Microsoft Web sites:

Did it work?

I actually bought a new laptop and have been setting that up. I want to keep this older desktop and keep it going for the wife and kids but havent had the chance to do the disk check yet. I will update this week.