Purchritude,
Nah, it wasn't the WGA program that cooked your laptop, it was probably all the extra rootkits and malware that were on the pirated installation of XP you had.
Start into Safe Mode, offload your data, and then use the Dell-supplied Recovery Solution (the Dell OS reinstallation CD and/or Dell PC Restore by Symantec) to reimage your hard disk back to the way it was when you took your Dell out of it's factory shipping box.
For great advice on all topics XP, visit http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp