Someone help please!

[Super-Rye]

Well long story short my computer completely busted on friday. I don't know how, I went to turn it on and it wouldn't boot XP. Well after 17 hours straight and a waste of a saturday I got it working...to a point. Then today I went back to get it all back up and running and encountered a problem. Basically my soundcard wasn't working but everything else was. I check out the dell site, the CD I used to install my drivers was infact missing some of the drivers so I got them off the dell site. Mainly just 2 drivers. One needs the other and the first one needs the service pack 2. I download the service pack, it did give me some troubles but I finally got it, and when it does the automatic reboot it gets to the desktop and tells me internet explorer is having a data execution error (or whatever the hell it is) and nothing loads!

I'm getting really tired of this microsoft crap, it's only a 2 year old computer so none of this should really be happening. I'm at my wits end people! Anyone who has any advice on how to fix this I'd be extremely grateful! Anything? My heads about to explode. :(

[jammies]

Usually means the driver you installed doesn't meet the Windows "security" model. Follow this link (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875352) and it'll tell you what it does. To turn it off:
Right click on My Computer
Click on Properties
Click on the Advanced tab
Click on the Settings button in the Performance section
Click on the Data Execution Prevention tab
Select the item labeled "Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only".

[llama64]

If Jammies suggestion doesn't help you may want to look into your harddrive. I had similar problems happen to my computer and it turned out to be a failing harddrive. Certain sectors became corrupted trashing key files in Windows, even after re-installation.

[Vulcan]

Another thing with Dell is that even if your guarantee time is over they still provide phone support for their computers and you can tell Canadian jokes to the staff in India.