I do remember having to do what phishphreek mentions with my Compaq Desktop 2 years ago, it used 7 CDs. I then erased the partition on the drive to regain my 2 gigs.

I guess I lucked out with my Toshiba (purchased in December) giving me a recovery DVD (although not a legit copy of Windows CD , the good old days, eh?)

A friend of mine had made the mistake on his HP and fdisk'ed the drive before making a recovery disk or copying the partition. He called HP and they gave him recovery disks for his HP. So contacting Dell is prob the best thing to do and asking for a disk.

Personally, I always make backups of the information on a new computer in case of harddrive failures, virus outbreaks or ID10t errors.

Can never be too paranoid