Reformatting with Dual Windows OS

I have an Dell Ispiron E1505 laptop with a partitioned HD. I reformatted a couple years ago onto the second partion D: with XP Pro in an attempt to conserve space. The plan was to put windows on the 10G D: partition and leave the C: drive clean for everything else. To clean out the C: drive, i was told to simply Delete all the files from the C: drive. with the exeption of a couple of system files that would not delete, i deleted everything from the drive. After this the computer still boots as if there are two OS on the machine. My question is will the ctrl+F11 reset work given what i have done, and if it does, how do i clean out the D: drive to get my comp back to normal operating? Also, if the ctrl+F11 reset does not work, my DVD drive does not work either, so how would i boot from an external HD or a Flash Drive? Thank you.

Sounds like all you need to do is edit boot.ini and remove the entry for the old, now removed, XP installation.
Right click on My Computer and select Properties
Click on the Advanced tab
Under Startup and Recovery, click the Settings button
Click on the Edit button
Notepad will open with the contents of boot.ini in it.

Remove the entry that points to C:, save the file then reboot and you should boot directly to the D: XP install.

As for Ctrl+F11 working or not, that depends on whether the hidden partition is still on the hard drive or not. Post a snap shot of Disk Management], expanded so I can see everything. The easiest way to do this is to make it full screen then capture the window by pressing the Print Screen key. The start MS Paint and paste the screen capture into it, save it then upload it here and post the link using the Browse, Upload and Manage Current Attachments buttons below the text input areas.

To open Disk Management, click on Start then Run, type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter or click Go.