So, your view of Dell, the company, will be based now on how prompt the replies are of the volunteer forum users ... other users/customers like you?  Just FYI ... this forum is NOT an official avenue of support for Dell; while there are some random Dell employees and some regulars acting as the role of moderator, this is largely a user-to-user forum.  For an official and timely response FROM DELL, you will need to contact Support directly, via phone or chat. Obtaining replacement media is not so bad as you think.  Dell is not alone in not shipping installation media ... nearly all OEM's have stopped shipping media.  I hate it as much as the next guy, but that is today's reality.  However, Dell makes it much easier than most OEM's to obtain this media.  You can request media here, free of charge: support.dell.com/.../backupcd_form Alternatively, you can install with Retail media, then activate by phone using the license key on the computer: www.mydigitallife.info/download-windows-7-iso-official-32-bit-and-64-bit-direct-download-links As for the Recovery Partition ... it may not be working for many reasons, including disk or file corruption, changes to the boot files (dual-boot, repair, cloning to new disk), etc.  When this option works, it is great - fast, don't have to mess with drivers, software, etc. - but unfortunately, it is as prone to error as any other computer software.  I've never seen your particular issue and don't imagine you have many options remaining to fix it.
I received this machine, service tag [ADMIN NOTE: Service Tag removed per privacy policy], from a customer who was infected with multiple trojans and at least one rootkit. Rather than pull my hair out trying to clean the system since the user had all significant personal data on external media, she chose to have me simply reinstall using the Dell DataSafe Local Factory Image. This process appears to complete successfully, but upon the reboot, it BSODs with a STOP 0x0000007b. Since this is generally related to ATA/AHCI settings in BIOS and/or drivers related to same, I set it to ATA mode and tried again. BSOD. Tested ram, passed. Tested HDD, passed. Used bootrec.exe to /fixmbr and /fixboot. Reboot, BSOD. Set back to AHCI mode. Reboot, BSOD. Used bootrec.exe again, /scanos finds no installed OS and /rebuildbcd also finds no installed OS. Looked at C: while booted to command prompt, appears to be a complete Win7 install. Booted a Linux live environment. Tested all hardware again. No errors found. Searched BIOS for any boot sector virus protection or other such setting that might be interfering with OS install. No such setting appears to exist. I'm just about out of ideas. The only one I have left is to reinstall with Win7 retail media and her Dell key. I really don't want to have to do that, since Dell's system image already has all her drivers and support software already and should "just work". The customer says she bought all Dell products during her last upgrades in December 2010, but after talking to phone support regarding a previous issue she says she'll never call Dell again. She brought it to me hoping I can square it. She said that if I can't, she's going to go with HP for her planned hardware upgrades next month, even though she really liked the Dell hardware, just not the Phone Support. Tom
Dell Inspiron 14R (N4010) BSOD on factory image restore