The Recovery partition is a separate partition on your computer's hard drive or SSD and is used to restore or reinstall the ...

Recovery Drive is a special partition on the hard drive that usually contains all the required files that can fully restore your Windows PC in case your system becomes unstable for any reason.

Choose "Dell Factory Image Recovery and DataSafe Options" or "Dell Backup and Recovery Manager" to access the recovery partition. Follow the on-screen directions to restore the operating system.

Hard to tell what's on that Dell DVD. Sometimes what they do is restore the factory state by wiping the harddrive clean and restoring the OS partition and sometimes a recovery or OEM partition.

How to Boot off the Recovery Partition of an HP. The hidden recovery partition on your HP computer lets you restore your business machine back to its factory default condition. The recovery ...

I wouldn't give even odds that attempting to restore the recovery partition would be successful. You are probably best off selling the laptop at a loss on craigslist, or on the Ars Agora classifieds.