Installing Windows XP on Inspiron 1520 HELP

So one of my friends just bought a Inspiron 1520. She and I both hate Vista which came pre installed on the system. Dell would not give her XP. Well either way I followed the instructions from the below link and everything worked out:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=165176

Now, a day later she accidentely hit the Media Direct button. The Media Direct loaded up and she got an error about the harddisk not being found or something like that. So, she hit the exit button and restarted the laptop and as soon as the screen where it says hit F2 for Bios Setup, F12 for Boot Sequence Menu, a black screen comes up with just the words "Invalid Partition Table...". So, we contacted Dell and the guy walked me through deleting all partitions and just having one partition. I don't trust these guys and I honestly feel like they give their tech support out a book in front of them.

So, I kept asking him if creating just one partition will take care of the problem and won't occur again. He said that deleting the partition with Media Direct will disable Media Direct. Well either way we did all that and reinstalled XP Pro, so just to be on the safe side I turned off the Laptop and hit the Media Direct button. The Laptop started up to the Media Direct screen then went to a blue windows screen (not the blue screen of death) where it says "Windows XP Startup.................." and then all of a sudden the laptop rebooted and went back to the "Windows XP Startup.....screen" and it kept doing it. After about 5 times I turned the laptop off and turned to the internet in search of help.

Now, I plan to format everything and reinstall windows xp but before that I'd like to know if there is any precautionary steps I can follow to avoid this problem in the future.

Is there anyway at all to disable the Media Direct Button?????? She really does'nt want to take the risk of hitting the button 2 or 3 months down the line and losing all her stuff on the hard drive again.

Thanks in advance for all your help.

 

This may help...assuming you haven't seen it before.
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.htm

 

That says it's for MediaDirect versions 1 and 2.
Dell is using MediaDirect version 3 on the 1520.
I'm not sure how much is different.

Here's another thread to check
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=157838

You have to use the Media Direct Disk to avoid getting the "self-destruct button" mentioned in this thread
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=152441