I recently ordered a Dell Inspiron 1720. After I got it, the first thing I did was to reinstall the OS (Window Vista Home Premium) to really clear out the crap that Dell installs with it. Uninstalling the software wasn't clean enough for me. When I did, I ran into a problem with the reinstall where it would get to the fifth step, "Completing Installation", freeze and just sit there looking at me. The progress bar stopped and nothing happened.
After trying it a second time and having that fail, I started considering options. Then I remembered having seen on the screen where you select the drive to install, choose to format the drive, etc., an option that said "Load Drivers". Select this option and when prompted, pop in your Dell "Drivers and Utilities" disk. It will scan the disk and look for various drivers for your system. On mine, it found a new driver for the hard drive and that was all. I selected that driver and went on my way.
The install ran just fine after that and I got the OS reinstalled. I reinstalled the few Dell apps I actually wanted and all was well.
Hope this helps someone else.