My Dell had a recovery partition. You could get to it from Windows, it was in Dell Tools, and you could get to it by inserting the restore cd that you had to create when you first put the laptop on...
Now i did a stupid thing, i deleted the WHOLE harddrive, i some how decided to delete the partition tables, not a good idea as all was lost. Windows didnt want to help, dell was going to charge me to fix it, and i am sure it was hefty.
So i got onto the windows website, ordered the trial of xp, loaded it on, and then just changed the registration details once i had installed it, and it all went well.