My Dell Dimension 3000 was infected with malware and would not boot up. I reloaded Windows XP from scratch and lost all of my drivers. If I down load drivers, which file folder should they be copied to? Is there anywhere I can purchase a complete restore dvd containing XP and all of the drivers?

You might be able to purchase a recovery disc set from Dell for your computer, but it's unlikely. It's also expensive when they are available. There are some websites that claim to sell restore sets for computers, but I've never tried them. I don't know that I would trust a disc that didn't come from the manufacturer in any case. You really don't need those discs anyway if you can borrow a copy of the XP installation disc for the version preloaded on your computer. You will have to activate your copy if you do this, but you can use the key from the sticker on your computer.

When you download drivers from Dell, they are in the form of a self-extracting file (a ".exe" file). It doesn't matter where you download them to on your drive. When you run the file, it will extract the drivers to the appropriate locations and install them for you. (What I do is create a folder called "Dell drivers" and download the files there, but you can put them anywhere. You don't need to keep those after installation.)

Doing an XP installation this way isn't a bad thing. Most brand-name computers come preloaded with lots of stuff you don't need anyway. If you install a fresh copy of XP and the required drivers, you're free to put on just what you need after that. There are plenty of free or very low-cost applications to give you the basics. Avast! or Avira are good antivirus programs. OpenOffice or LibreOffice are free suites that rival Microsoft's Office programs. CDBurnerXP is great for making discs. There are many others.

Good luck on your restore, and thanks for using Fixya!

When you download drivers, they usually come as compressed files. Windows has a built in program to extract them. Right click on the downloaded compressed file and choose extract here. Double click on the file if it is an .exe file. If they are .dll files, you need to find the device that needs the driver in your device manager, choose install or update driver, and browse to the place that you downloaded the file to.
If when you reboot, it pops up a message about finding new hardware, and prompts you to install a driver, browse to the place you downloaded the driver to