Restore Partition, running from external USB Disc?

[jaystarter]

I have been given a friends Dell Inspiron 530S with Vista Home installed. The problem is it wont boot. The PC Tech that looked at it said the PC was finished and would cost more to replace parts than it was worth, but she (my friend) can't remember the exact specifics of the diagnosis. No discs came with the Dell and I know from searching Dell support there is a recovery partition installed. By tapping F8 while booting I can get to the option to System Configuration Repair and move through the options but eventually it asks to select an account either ADMINISTRATOR or Alex (her name) or Guest plus a password. There has never been a password for the accounts as far as we know but hitting enter or trying various passwords that might have been used all fail. So can go no further. I have taken out the HDD and connecting to my PC with an External USB enclosure I can see everything on the HDD and have copied all the Docs that she wants to save e.g. contacts,favs,and the My Documents folder.

Now, my question: looking through the HDD contents I can see the restore partition and exploring this and double clicking the PCRestore the Dell restore programme looks set to run. I have baulked at pressing the next button and wonder if the restore will run like this or does it have to be done in the original Dell machine?

[jaystarter]

Replying to me. Got impatient so gave it a go but after a couple of seconds of activity an error message pops up so I will forget that option.

[StuartR]

I would have been very surprised if this had worked, but thank you for testing it and letting us know.

[John Gray]

To change the Administrator password to null=no password, have a go at running the bootable CD Offline NT Password & Registry Editor.