Alienware X51 Recovery Partition ?

I have been using the DELL recovery partition for as long as I can remember, and it has always been available from the Recovery Console Menu. I am unable to locate any way to access this partition on my Windows 8 system, and the box will not boot. None of the old methods work (F8, SHIFT F8). I got a W8 install disk (Trial downloaded from MSWebsyte) and booted to the recovery menu that way, but there is no option to restore to factory image. What am I missing ? It can't be this difficult...