I'm doing a fresh XP Home install on my new to me Dell Laptop (of course they are no recovery disks). The problem is that after copying the files and rebooting to the GUI interface, it will not see the CD Rom to continue. It will say "Insert Windows XP SP2 Disk into the D: Drive", or give me a redundancy check error. I do not think the drive is bad since it booted and loaded the files to start with.

My impression is that the CD that you are using is faulty or dirty. The computer needs the disk for the entire installation process, not just for copying files. The problem can be in some other parts but the message that you get leads me to that conclusion. Try to clean the CD carefully or use another installation CD, of the same version, and use your own product key.