unmountable boot volume

Is it just me or is "unmountable boot volume" a relatively common problem on Dell computers? I have now had to fix this on two seperate computers. It seems like they don't handle bad shutdowns very well. Also, do Dell computers not come with Windows XP CDs? I needed to start into the Recovery Console but there's no way to get there with any of the Dell CDs. So I had to use my own XP CD. The first computer I tried to fix didn't get corrected through chkdsk /p or chkdsk /r, so I had to transfer all the files and then reinstall everything.