Windows XP BSOD

["Tim Hawes" <timsyahoo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm after a bit of help as my Dad has turned his PC into a doorstop.
He's called the manufacturer but the call centre operators can't help
(they either don't seem to want to listen to his problem and/or think
they know what it is and "solve" something else).
It's a Dell Dimension 9150 with XP Pro, bought about October last year.

It started with a stop error on "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"
with
the names file "iastor.sys" - the error is well described here:
http://www.ydeologi.com/2006/04/26/dell-dimension-e510-iastorsys-windows-xp-blue-screen-error-stop-code-0x000000d1/

Searching the Dell forums gave these instructions to fix it:

Dell KB Document Number: 311881
http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=uk&l=en&s=gen&docid=20D0A093855D3F0AE0401E0A55170808&cs

This Intel driver download link was contained in those instructions:
ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/SATA/R130119.EXE
But after downloading the 16MB file and trying to run it, it gave a
"your system does not meet the minimum requirements error" and
stopped.

Typing the asset tag into the tech support section of the Dell site
yielded a few more "urgent" downloads, including an Intel chipset
update, but this again gave the "your system does not meet the minimum
requirements error" and stopped.

He's read some other web forums and they had suggested running chkdsk.
He ran it first in "report-only" mode and it gave no results,
then in
"check and fix" mode and the computer is now stuck in an endless
loop
where it won't boot up. It sticks in chkdsk at "8% Stage 4 - Verifying
File Data". He's left it overnight and it never budges from this
point.

I'd thought we might get to a command prompt and maybe run fdisk to
re-select the primary partition, but (a) I don't know if that'll work,
and (b) we can't get to a command prompt...

Can anyone advise what his next step might be? He has re-installation
disks but would rather not re-install from scratch, even though he's
got all his data backed-up.

Thanks guys,

Tim.