what!?

that would cost a lot.

is there no cheaper solution?

or am I shafted now that warranty has run out

You wrote "I either never received the OS recovery disk or lost it".
You need to be more careful with the discs you receive. 

Press F12 at restart while the blue Dell is showing on the screen. 
This should bring up the boot menu.  Check if there is a reinstallation
partition available.  Dell began installing a reinstallation partition
but I am not sure at what model they began.  See if you have one there.

Skybird

Can you give me a few sources for the reinstallation disk?

Thanks

Don

I've had this computer, Dell Dimension E510 for a while now, and I feel the need to reformat it. Unfortunately, I either never received the OS recovery disk or lost it.   I noticed some other people have contacted Dell to recieve the disks, but I can't because my service code is out of use already.   Is there a way I can buy the disks for my system, or download it somehow?    Thanks.

Contact Dell reps on Dell.com   explain situation.. you may have to actually purchase instalation disks.  I got mine only after the online full system recovery feature dell offers did not work.  Had to have the disks. I was still within warranty   so no charge to me. Did not come with computer when purchased though.

I have the same problem. The only differrence is, I never received any software recovery disks when I bought my computer new.

You can request discs here ....... support.dell.com/.../document

With some versions of Windows, another option is to download  the appropriate Windows DVD image and burn it to a DVD.

For what it's worht, Windows 8 will be released on October 26 and the upgrade will be $40.

Vista and 7 retail .isos will work with the product key on your COA provided you use the same version and phone activation. For more details see A Clean Install of Windows.