Vista "Other User" when attempting to enter "Repair Your Computer"

[rivkah]

My dad's Dell Inspiron 530 hasn't been cleaned in a long time and it's just full of a ton of junk. So, I have attempt to restore it to factory settings. I've done it before with this computer and it went flawlessly. Now, I'm running into a problem. Whenever I attempt to enter "Repair Your Computer" after hitting the F8 key on Windows boot-up, I get prompted with a logon screen that only let's me sign in to some "other user" account, even tho I can log into Windows fine. I've tried entering nothing, and it says it requires something to be entered. I then tried to login with the accounts on the computer with no success.
I have now been looking around for quite awhile for a fix, but every topic I've come across about it has apparently never been solved, or they just don't post the fix. There were a few suggestions on the topics on what to do, but nothing helped. I've so far pretty much uninstalled everything on the computer, deleted all the users, and only left with the administrator account. I can see the OEM partition to reset the computer to factory, but I'm afraid of running the program in Windows or it's Safe Mode since I do not know how safe that would be.

 

[Saga Lout]

I think this is going wrong at stage one. To get to the Recovery option Dell put in to enable you to take the system back to the day it left the factory, you are prompted as you boot up to press a certain Function key. F8 only takes you to a Windows advanced Boot menu - you need to go to Dell's Recovery Partition.

I think Dell uses F2 for BIOS and F12 for boot options so try F11 or watch carefully at the first screen that lights up when you power up.

 

[rivkah]

I think this is going wrong at stage one. To get to the Recovery option Dell put in to enable you to take the system back to the day it left the factory, you are prompted as you boot up to press a certain Function key. F8 only takes you to a Windows advanced Boot menu - you need to go to Dell's Recovery Partition.

I think Dell uses F2 for BIOS and F12 for boot options so try F11 or watch carefully at the first screen that lights up when you power up.

Here is the owner's manual: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/inspd530/en/OM/HTML/trouble.htm#wp1089008
It shows that the steps I took to attempt to restore the computer to factory settings were correct.
Also, I have tried several different keys and key combinations. None have worked.

 

[Saga Lout]

In which case, I suspect the Recovery Partition is damaged in some way. If you can remove the hard disk and slave it to another PC, Checkdisk may find one or more bad sectors and fix them.

You could download a Linux operating system, run it as a LiveCD and have a look in the hard disk to rescue your Dad's files. PCLinuxOS is a goo done and comes free of charge from http://www.pclinuxos.com. You need to burn the CD and include the ISO that makes it bootable and ImgBurn is also opensource and therefore free, and makes a good job of that burning process.

 

[rivkah]

In which case, I suspect the Recovery Partition is damaged in some way. If you can remove the hard disk and slave it to another PC, Checkdisk may find one or more bad sectors and fix them.

You could download a Linux operating system, run it as a LiveCD and have a look in the hard disk to rescue your Dad's files. PCLinuxOS is a goo done and comes free of charge from http://www.pclinuxos.com. You need to burn the CD and include the ISO that makes it bootable and ImgBurn is also opensource and therefore free, and makes a good job of that burning process.

I have two problems with that:
Firstly, how have you come to the conclusion that the recovery partition is damaged what-so-ever? I only have a problem logging into the windows repair.
Secondly, I already stated I can log into windows and everything just fine and there are no files that we care enough about to worry over. My problem is not being able to use the OEM partition to restore the computer to factory settings. I do not have any discs to do so with. Or any Vista discs what-so-ever.

EDIT:
After not being able to find any answers, I ended up being able to obtain the proper disc to just install a fresh copy of Windows to the system.