There are usually two types of recovery disk, normally if it's a set of disks it just clones an image onto the hard drive to recover, and if it's a single disk it's no more than a normal windows CD with the manufacturers branding on. If it's a normal windows disk you will have the option to goto the repair console, you press 'r' at the first question it asks you.
If not, if you have another computer or know anyone with a computer that uses the same operating system and they have a normal unbranded windows CD you can use theirs so long as you use
your windows product key.
If you get stuck at the password to log onto recovery console you can boot from a windows 2000 pro CD to the recovery console and it bypasses the username and password and gives you admin rights straight away
