system recovery

Although your question is not really related to the Dimension BIOS, the topic of this forum, I will first tell you that Dell does not provide a restore CD.   Instead they either provide a Windows XP CD to enable you to reinstall Windows or a restore partition on your hard drive.   If you did not get the Windows XP CD, you should have one.  At the top of the Software - Windows XP forum (a forum better suited to provide answers to your question) you can find a link to the following post that explains the policy and how to obtain that CD.

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_mediaexp&message.id=1895

Instructions for reinstalling Windows, drivers, and applications can be found at:

http://www.djdenham.com/Install%20Procedures.htm

If your system shipped after 7/15/04, it should have come with a special partition on your hard drive that can be used to restore your system to it's as shipped state using PC Restore.  Information about PC Restore can be found at:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kb/en/document?dn=1090152&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19

If you need further information on either of these alternatives, I encourage you to post in the Windows XP forum where most of these questions have probably been answered several times each day.

Steve