Dear Mary,
If I were you, I would start from scratch (cause I've been in your shoes). You have saved your data so thats a good thing. If you boot from the xp cd, choose install and choose delete partitions. If the xp cd will not let you do the preceding(with botched installs xp will cycle to try and complete an install).
Your best bet is to use Dariks boot and nuke to wipe the drive first and then boot from your xp cd and do a clean install. Here are a couple of helpful websites.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html