Hello,
No. Dell did nothing to the machine. Vista did nothing to the machine. Are you sure that the software you are using can read your hard drive? Can it read SATA Drives?
Vista does nothing to your system. Get your facts right please. There is no boot file put on there by Vista or Dell that would stop it from loading a CD at all. If that was the case i would have never been able to load Vista, Server 2008 or Ubuntu on my Dell. Which is a Dimension 8400. Much older than yours.
JCortes,
I fully agree. I have run Vista since it was Beta and have had few problems with it. All of them were my fault.
Cheers,
Mak