Windows Vista Kidnapped My PC And Won't Give It Back

I knew I shouldn't have tried to install Vista, but, having some time to
kill last night, I figured, what the heck?  Let's see what happens.

 

Brand new Dell E410 with 2gig memory,  gigantic RAID hard drives, and
Windows XP Pro on it.  Had just bought it from Dell less than a month
ago and it had already been rated as Windows Vista Ready.  Ordered the
Dell Windows Vista Express Upgrade (came with it, you just had to put
your name on their list to get it when it was shipped), and the only
other "big" software on the PC that did not come with it was PaintShop
Pro and TurboTax.  Everything else was pretty much vanilla.

 

Started the installation process and all the compatibility checks were
done.  No problems.  The upgrade said this process could take several
hours  OK. No problem.  I watched the screens for awhile as it
downloaded some more updates to the upgrade program and then as it
started uncompressing the installation files.  After about an hour, I
got tired of watching so I went and did something else for a couple of
hours. Came back and my monitor is black and the lights are on the PC
showing it's active.  Every so often you see the hard-disk light
flicker.  So I figured it must be doing something. 

 

Went to bed at midnight and it was still in the same state.  Woke up
this morning and it is still in the same state. 

 

I have tried to reboot to safe mode and it says it cannot finish
installation in safe mode so reboot (the "dumb-ass" I can hear from
Microsoft in that statement is implied...).  Tried rebooting several
times, always immediately goes back to that "locked" state.

 

I finally gave up and figured I'd start from scratch and just reinstall
Windows XP Pro again from the recovery CD's.  No such luck.  My computer
is now unable to read the recovery CD also. Even told it to boot from
the CD drive, but it still goes into the "locked" state.

 

I hope I don't have to end up shipping the whole thing back to DELL to
have it fixed but it's looking like I might.

 

I would pay a ransom to Windows Vista to get my computer back if only I
knew where to send the money.