Issue with restoring Dell Inspiron to factory settings

Hello,
I had a Dell Insprion 1545, running Vista, and have restored it to factory setting using the image restore option under F8 > Advance Boot Options: Repair Your Computer > Dell Factory Image Restore.

My sister has the same computer and asked me to restore it in the same manner. The first issue I ran into is, after clicking F8, and Repair Your Computer, the computer just started instead of going to the necessary options. Also, when I clicked on Computer, her Recovery (D) drive is almost completely full (48.1 MB free of 14.6 GB). I clicked on the Recovery drive and noticed a lot of stuff that shouldn't be in there, i.e. personal files. I am not exactly sure which files should be there, but her Recovery folder is empty.
I have attached a screenshot of the Recovery drive and its folders.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Nicole

View attachment Doc1.doc

48 MB doesn't indicate that a 15 GB drive is "almost full". It's a small fraction of the drive capacity. However, there should be no personal files on it. The screenshot isn't attached.

I apologize for the screenshot, it was added as a link below the text. Her hard drive bar is almost full red and it says there is only 48.1 MB of FREE space out of 14.6 GB, not that it was using 48.1 MB out of 14.6 GB.

Screenshot: View attachment Doc1.doc

Thank you,
Nicole

View attachment Doc1.doc

No need to apologize. It's me that needs to apologize. I misread your post. You said 48 MB "free". I totally missed it.

I also didn't click on your .doc file.

I'll need to look at the .doc file again.

I don't have a recovery drive on this system so I looked on my Dell Win 7 system and this is what it looks like. In the Recovery folder there are two folders- system 32 and windowsre. Both are inaccessible. It would appear that all the folders on the Vista system might be useful for a recovery. Normally, one can't add personal files to that volume.

Thank you for your post Wither. Could you tell me what you mean by: "It would appear that all the folders on the Vista system might be useful for a recovery."
Since the Recovery folder in her Recovery drive is empty, is there any other path to take to a factory restore without the disks?

Thanks,
Nicole

I just thought that to do a recovery, one would need the Program Data, Windows, Users, etc. What bothers me is that the Recovery folder is from 2009 but most of the other folders are from 2010. Like I said, I'm comparing two different systems and one which doesn't have a recovery drive.

For some reason I think you can get recovery discs from Dell. Have you tried Dell support? I recovered this Dell system one time to factory settings and I remember there were a number of choices in regards to the recovery.

Why does your sister want to recover the system to factory settings?

The most likely reason the recovery partition is full is System Restore.
Open System Restore settings and turn off System Restore for the D: drive.

That should delete any System Restore files on D: and free up the space. Then the recovery process may work as it did for your computer.

Control Panel, Backup and Restore Center.
Click on Create a restore point or change settings on the left.
Uncheck D: